MOBILISING 
AMERICA 


ARJHUR. 
RULLARP 


tntl)e€itpoflrmgork 

THE  LIBRARIES 


r 


Bequest  of 

Frederic  Bancroft 

1860-1945 


GENERAL  LIBRARY 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPAT^TY 

NEW  VORK  •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


Mobilising  America 


BY 
ARTHUR  BULLARD 

Author  of 
•The  Diplomacy  of  the  Great  War,"  etc. 


N^m  fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1917 


COPTRIGHT,    1917 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  April,   1917. 


PREFACE 

No  American  who  has  lived  in  France 
or  England,  as  I  have  these  last  tv/o 
years,  and  has  watched  them  struggling 
with  the  problem  of  organising  democ- 
racy to  resist  the  impact  of  war,  could 
help  feeling  at  every  minute  that  some 
time  we  might  have  to  meet  the  same 
problems.  Day  after  day  experiments 
were  being  made,  some  successful,  some 
failures,  the  lessons  of  which  would  be  of 
value  to  us  if  ever  we  had  to  mobilise. 
And  so  —  anticipating  plenty  of  time  to 
mature  my  notes  —  I  set  to  work  gath- 
ering the  preliminary  data  for  a  book  on 
"  How  Democracies  Mobilise."  It  prom- 
ised to  be  a  bulky  tome,  there  was  so 
much  which  seemed  noteworthy. 

But  War  is  already  upon  us.  And  so 
I  have  tried  to  summarise  in  this  short 
space  the  main  points  I  had  intended  to 
develop  at  length. 


PREFACE 

It  would  be  quite  impossible  to  list 
even  the  bare  names  of  all  those  in 
France  and  England  to  whom  I  am  in- 
debted for  advice,  suggestion  and  criti- 
cism. Whatever  clear  thinking  there  is 
in  the  book  is  the  fruit  of  much  discus- 
sion with  people  who  were  in  a  position 
to  know  more  than  I  of  the  various 
phases  of  the  problem. 

This  is  especially  true  of  the  section 
dealing  with  the  Censorship  and  Public- 
ity. More  than  a  year  ago  I  wrote  a 
long  chapter  on  the  subject.  It  has  been 
through  the  hands  of  many  friends:  fel- 
low journalists,  British  and  French  poli- 
ticians and  a  large  number  of  army  men. 

In  the  same  wa}^  my  proposals  in  re- 
gard to  the  mobilisation  of  labor  indus- 
try  result  not  onl}^  from  my  own  observa- 
tions but  also  from  those  of  many  others. 
The  scheme  I  suggest  has  met  the  ap- 
proval of  a  number  of  Labor  men  here 
and  abroad.  It  is,  I  believe,  very  near 
what  the  English  would  do,  if  they  had 
to  do  it  all  over  again. 


PREFACE 

Many  of  these  subjects  are  highly  con- 
troversial. There  is  room  for  wide  and 
sincere  difference  of  opinion.  But  I 
have  found  general  agreement  about 
them  among  those  men,  intimately  famil- 
iar with  the  problems,  who  put  the  effi- 
cient conduct  of  war  before  every  other 
consideration. 

That  is  my  point  of  departure.  I  am 
not  considering  the  ethics  of  war,  nor  the 
advisability  of  our  participation  in  the 
present  struggle.  I  accept  the  fact  that 
we  have  decided  to  fight  and  I  try  to 
show  how  the  experiences  of  other  de- 
mocracies can  teach  us  the  way  to  do  it 
efficiently. 

Arthur  Bullard. 
New  York  City, 

26  March,  1917. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     America  Goes  to  War     ...  1 

II     Democracies    as    Fighting   Ma- 
chines       11 

III  The    Mobilisation    of    Public 

Opinion 26 

IV  The  Mobilisation  of  Industry  .  64 
V     The  Mobilisation  of  Men    .      .  98 

VI     A  Programme 120 


MOBILISING 

CHAPTER  I 

AMERICA    GOES    TO    WAR 

OUR  Naval  gunners  are  ordered  to 
fire  at  German  Submarines  on 
sight.  The  Germans  sink  our  ships  with- 
out warning.  Whatever  the  diplomats 
may  like  to  call  it,  this  is  War. 

And  we  do  not  know  how  to  fight. 

There  is  no  possible  gain  and  every 
chance  of  disaster  in  minimising  the 
amount  we  have  to  learn.  We  have  no 
American  general  who  ever  commanded 
an  Army  Corps,  not  one  of  our  Naval 
Officers  ever  fought  against  a  Dread- 
naught,  none  of  our  Artillery  men  ever 
fired  a  real  shot  at  an  enemy  aircraft. 

Digging  the  Panama  Canal  has  trained 
some  of  our  soldiers  in  peace-time  engi- 


2  MOBILISING 

neering.  It  has  given  us  men  like  Goe- 
thals,  who  know  how  to  handle  and  feed 
large  bodies  of  men.  His  assistants  have 
had  practice  in  honest  buying  and  manu- 
facturing, which  will  be  of  great  value 
in  organising  our  munition  industries. 
For  this  we  should  be  thankful.  But 
when  it  comes  to  fighting  —  large-scale, 
modern  warfare  —  we  have  no  experience 
at  all. 

We  must  learn.  And  the  speed  with 
which  we  reach  proficiency  will  depend 
very  largely  on  how  quick  and  ready  we 
are  to  profit  by  the  experiences  of  the 
European  democracies  under  the  same 
strain.  For  France  and  Britain  are  like 
us.     They  also  had  to  learn. 


The  war  is  upon  us  and  w^e  all  — 
individually  in  the  privacy  of  our  own 
hearts,  collectively  as  a  nation  —  must 
decide  what  we  are  going  to  do  about  it. 
Is  "  soldiering  "  going  to  mean  limp  lazi- 
ness as  it  did  in  our  slang  of  yesterday? 


WE  GO  TO  WAR  3 

Or  are  we  going  to  restore  its  true  and 
more  virile  meaning? 

We  will  do  as  little  in  this  struggle  with 
Germany  —  and  do  it  as  badly  —  as  we 
did  against  Spain,  if  we  are  listless.  We 
can  do  a  great  deal  more  —  and  infinitely 
more  efficiently  —  if  we  set  our  hearts  to 
it. 


The  possibilities  we  must  face  may  be 
grouped  under  three  heads  —  the  two  ex- 
tremes and  the  more  probable,  far-from- 
happy,  medium. 

First.  The  submarine  blockade  of  the 
British  Isles  may  prove  as  ineffectual  as 
the  Zeppelin  raids  and  the  European  En- 
tente may  be  victorious  in  the  field  this 
summer.  Few  think  they  will  win  so 
quickly  by  force  of  arms  alone.  But 
they  will  be  helped  somewhat  in  their 
warfare  by  the  economic  distress  of  the 
Teutons.  There  are  also  signs  and  por- 
tents which  may  mean  serious  trouble  be- 
tween Germany  and  her  Allies  and  this 


4  MOBILISING 

too  may  hasten  the  victory  of  our 
friends.  The  Revolution  in  Russia  may 
spread.  Perhaps  Turkey  or  Bulgaria^ 
Hungary  or  Austria  may  collapse.  And 
the  Entente  will  also  be  helped  by  our 
financial,  industrial  and  food  reserves. 
Perhaps  the  war  will  be  over  by  mid-sum- 
mer. 

If  luck  breaks  for  us  in  this  way,  it 
does  not  matter  much  what  we  do. 

Second.  At  the  other  extreme,  the 
Subm.arines  may  prove  effective.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  we  know  very  little  about 
it.  Both  sides  are  optimistic.  Not  un- 
til several  months  have  passed,  not  till  we 
can  observe  results,  will  we  have  any 
certainty.  We  are  not  sure  that  the 
Germans  have  yet  done  their  worst. 
There  is  a  chance  that  in  spite  of  any 
help  we  can  bear,  they  may  succeed  in 
starving  England. 

It  is  impossible  to  picture  all  it  would 
mean  to  us  if  Britain  were  forced  to  give 
in.  But  one  thing  is  sure.  We  have 
already  cast  in  our  lot  against  the  Cen- 


WE  GO  TO  WAR  5 

tral  Empires.  We  have  crossed  that 
Rubicon.  We  are  not  liked  by  the  Ger- 
mans, and  if  they  starve  England  we  will 
have  to  sign  a  treaty  of  abject  surrender 
or  fight  to  the  extreme  limit  of  our 
power.  We  could  rally  the  wrecks  of 
Britain,  Canada,  Australasia  —  perhaps 
South  'Africa.  We  might  get  some  help 
from  the  Latin  American  Republics.  If 
Japan  kept  up  the  fight  we  could  hold 
the  Pacific.  But  we  would  need  every 
ounce  of  energy  in  our  last  citizen,  if  we 
were  to  show  ourselves  again  across  the 
Atlantic. 

This  is,  I  think,  the  least  probable  of 
the  possibilities  before  us.  But  still  it 
is  there.  War  —  as  Sherman  said  —  is 
not  a  pretty  game. 

Third.  The  middle  and  by  far  the 
most  probable  possibility  is  that  the  war 
will  outlast  this  summer.  The  Subma- 
rines may  prove  as  indecisive  as  the  Zep- 
pelins and  the  Spring  Offensive  of  the 
Entente  equally  indecisive.  Next  Sep- 
tember we  may  find  the  Map  of  the  War 


6  MOBILISING 

very  little  changed,  the  Germans  driven 
back  a  few  score  miles  in  the  west,  their 
line  somewhat  advanced  in  Russia,  the 
Balkans  or  in  Italy  —  the  deadlock  still 
unbroken.  If  the  next  harvest  in  Ger- 
many and  Austria  comes  up  to  the  ex- 
pectations of  many  impartial  observers, 
and  the  Mittel  Europa  Alliance  holds  to- 
gether, there  is  no  reason  to  be  sure  that 
the  European  Entente  will  win  in  1917. 

France  has  already  borne  a  tremen- 
dous strain.  For  two  and  a  half  years 
she  has  poured  out  her  blood  without 
stint ;  holding  the  enemy,  as  Horatius  did 
of  old,  till  help  could  be  mustered.  And 
she  will  go  into  this  summer's  campaign 
just  as  debonair,  just  as  generous,  just 
as  unstinting  as  last  year  —  which  means 
that  no  matter  how  the  tide  of  battle 
turns,  a  great  many  Frenchmen  are  go- 
ing to  die  this  summer.  And  if  peace  is 
not  won  by  fall  there  will  be  need  of  more 
from  us  than  money  and  munitions. 
There  will  be  urgent  need  of  men  —  our 
men. 


WE  GO  TO  WAR  7 

And  if  we  are  to  exercise  the  greatest 
possible  pressure  on  the  enemy  in  1918, 
we  must  begin  organising  our  forces  at 
once.  If  we  wait  till  the  need  is  obvious, 
we  will  be  late  at  roll-call. 

Next  Christmas,  if  the  war  is  still  in 
progress,  there  will  be  talk  of  peace,  just 
as  there  was  this  winter.  And  the  minis- 
ters of  the  Kaiser  will  base  their  terms 
on  what  they  consider  to  be  the  actual 
strength  of  their  enemies.  They  like  to 
call  themselves  "  realists "  and  they  do 
their  best  to  deserve  that  term.  In 
1914  they  were  not  at  all  frightened  by 
the  thought  that  Britain  might  develop 
an  Army.  In  the  fall  of  1917  they  will 
not  be  much  influenced  by  the  fact  that  we 
have  a  population  of  a  hundred  million, 
or  that  we  have  passed  a  Universal  Serv- 
ice Bill  which  will  give  us  a  great  army 
five  or  ten  years  hence,  when  we  have 
trained  up  officers  for  it.  But  if  their 
spies  tell  them  that  we  have  drilled  and 
equipped  a  large  Army  and  have  built 
the  transports  to  carry  them,  they  will  be 


8  MOBILISING 

impressed.     It  may  even  be  the  decisive 
consideration  which  will  end  the  War. 

So  the  question  of  whether  or  not  this 
horror  of  bloodshed  shall  continue  into 
1918  may  very  well  hinge  on  whether  we 
get  busy  now  or  six  months  hence. 


The  best  informed  men  in  Europe  are 
guessing  on  the  duration  of  the  war. 
Some  are  optimists  and  do  not  expect  an- 
other winter  in  the  trenches.  But  look 
up  the  betting  at  Lloyd's  in  London. 
They  are  used  to  assessing  risks.  And 
you  will  find  that  although  the  odds  on 
the  termination  of  the  war  in  1917  vary 
from  day  to  day,  they  seldom  reach  even 
money.  If  we  took  such  risks  in  busi- 
ness there  would  not  be  an  insurance  com- 
pany in  existence.  Remember  "  the 
Spring  Drive  "  of  1915,  remember  "  the 
Big  Push  "  of  last  summer,  and  how  little 
they  accomplished.  Is  it  wise  for  us  to 
bet  everything  on  this  year's  offensive? 
If  Germany  is  not  defeated  by  the  next 


WE  GO  TO  WAR  9 

snow-fall,  we  will  need  an  Army.     Ought 
we  to  stake  our  honor  on  such  a  chance? 

And  —  quite  irrespective  of  the  bet- 
ting odds  —  is  it  good  policy  for  us  to 
sit  idle  in  safety,  taking  profits  but  not 
risks,  while  our  friends  in  Europe  fight 
our  battles?  Is  it  wise  policy?  from  the 
point  of  view  of  those  of  us  who  abhor 
militarism,  to  show  a  reluctance  to  fight 
now  ? 

There  are,  I  take  it,  three  kinds  ©f 
people.  Conscientious  objectors,  who 
will  not  fight.  Jingoes,  who  say  they 
want  to  fight.  And  the  rest  of  us,  pa- 
cific people  who  do  not  like  to  fight. 

We  did  our  best  to  keep  out  of  the 
conflict.  Tolstoi  himself  could  hardly 
accuse  us  of  wanting  to  fight.  About  the 
worst  he  could  say  would  be  that  perhaps 
if  the  Archangel  Gabriel  had  been  Presi- 
dent, he  might  have  arranged  things. 
But  none  of  the  Archangels  were  candi- 
dates.    The  rest  of  us,  who  are  not  be- 


10  MOBILISING 

lievcrs  in  passive  resistance,  feel  that  Mr. 
Wilson  did  all  a  mere  man  could  to  keep 
the  peace.  A  strong  and  outspoken  mi- 
nority believe  he  did  too  much. 

We  have  patiently  —  and  abundantly 
^—  shown  that  it  is  hard  to  make  us  lose 
our  temper.  And  now,  unless  we  want  to 
be  trampled  under  foot,  we  must  show 
that  it  does  not  pay  to  force  us  to  fight. 

We  must  raise  an  Expeditionary 
Army  of  a  Half  Million  as  quickly  as  pos- 
sible —  more  quickly  than  has  ever  been 
done  before. 

Wc,  who  love  peace,  ought  to  keep  out 
of  war  as  long  as  possible  and  when  we 
are  forced  to  go  in  —  go  in  hard ! 

And  we  will  be  running  inexcusable 
risk,  if  we  forget  for  a  moment  that  we 
may  need  the  men. 


CHAPTER  II 

DEMOCRACIES    AS    FIGHTING    MACHINES 

THERE  is  no  reason  for  us  to  be 
ashamed  that  we  do  not  know  how 
to  fight.  Free  peoples  never  are  pre- 
pared for  war. 

The  last  great  struggle  between  de- 
mocracies was  our  Civil  War.  And  it 
was  well  on  into  the  third  year  before 
either  side  really  settled  down  to  it. 
Lincoln's  "  expert  "  military  advisers  did 
not  think  it  would  last  long,  so  they  be- 
gan by  asking  for  ninety-day  volunteers. 
Since  then  there  have  been  no  wars  waged 
by  democracies  except  the  Anglo-Boer 
struggle  and  our  conflict  with  Spain, 
In  neither  of  these  cases  did  popular 
government  gain  any  military  laurels. 
Overwhelming  resources  were  used  with 
wanton  wastefulness.  And  so  the  tradi- 
11 


12  MOBILISING 

tion  arose  that  democracies  cannot  fight. 

Suddenly  in  1914  the  two  great  de- 
mocracies of  Europe  were  faced  by  what 
the  Germans  call  Absolute  War.  There 
was  no  meeting  the  danger  half-w^ay.  It 
was  do  or  die.  It  was  bring  up  every 
ounce  of  energy  or  go  under. 

France  was  much  better  prepared  than 
Britain.  But  if  we  rank  German  pre- 
paredness at  100  per  cent.,  France  was 
little  more  than  half  ready.  This  seems 
to  be  an  inevitable  condition  of  those  who 
would  be  free.  Militarism  is  essentially 
oligarchic.  The  Liberals  the  w^orld  over 
are  primarily  interested  in  improving 
conditions  at  home.  Where  the  people 
rule,  the  emphasis  is  put  on  internal 
affairs  to  the  neglect  of  foreign  rela- 
tions. 

So  War,  Absolute  War,  caught  Brit- 
ain and  France  by  surprise.  It  was 
necessary  to  improvise  a  new  national 
frame  of  mind.  To  be  sure  the  older 
Frenchmen  remembered  1870,  and  all  the 
present  generation  had  grown  up  under 


DEMOCRACY  13 

the  menace  of  a  new  invasion.  But 
"Wolf!  Wolf!"  had  been  called  so 
often.  Public  opinion  was  unprepared. 
The  people  had  to  forget  their  habitual 
hobbies,  their  personal  interests  and  get 
together.  In  France  they  called  the  new 
spirit  rUnion  sacree.  The  British,  at 
first,  were  content  with  a  "  Party 
Truce." 

There  was  no  political  machinery 
to  meet  the  crisis.  Statesmen,  who  had 
scarcely  thought  of  danger,  found  them- 
selves faced  with  the  duties  of  a  Com- 
mittee of  Public  Safety.  Deputies  and 
IMembers  of  Parliament,  who  had  been 
elected  in  times  of  peace  because  of  their 
views  on  Old  Age  Pensions  and  Tariff 
Schedules,  had  to  decide  questions  of  war 
polity  for  which  they  had  no  training. 

Our  imagination  has  been  caught  by 
some  of  the  more  picturesque  extempo- 
risations of  the  soldiers.  The  Army  be- 
hind Paris  being  hurled  at  Von  Kluck's 
flank  —  in  taxi-cabs.  Auto-busses,  fresh 
from  the  London  streets  —  their  theater 


14  MOBILISING 

posters  intact  —  rushing  food  up  to  the 
British  front.  But  all  the  changing 
ministries,  Coalition  Governments,  War 
Cabinets,  etc.,  were  at  first  no  less  clumsy 
extemporisations  of  political  machinery. 
And  even  after  two  years  and  more,  no 
satisfactory  solution  of  the  parliamen- 
tary problem  has  been  found. 

Preparedness,  however,  is  only  rela- 
tive. Even  the  Germans,  docile  and  dis- 
ciplined, were  not  sufficiently  prepared. 
They  tried  to  be.  They  thought  they 
were.  But  they  were  not  —  not  quite. 
For  to  be  really  prepared  it  is  necessary 
to  understand  your  enemies,  and  Ger- 
many's programme  was  marred  by  one 
great  miscalculation  —  Britain.  They 
love  to  call  themselves  "  realists,"  but 
they  took  account  only  of  "actualities," 
paying  no  heed  to  potential  power.  The 
possibility  of  the  British  becoming  effi- 
cient soldiers  was  beyond  the  range  of 
their  imagination. 

The  British  contribution  to  this  strug- 
gle may  be  judged  from  two  points  of 


DEMOCRACY  15 

view.  You  may  base  your  critique  on 
what  sober  judgment  in  1914  thought 
Britain  could  do.  Or  you  ma^^  compare 
their  accomplishments  with  what  some  of 
their  misguided  spokesmen  have  said  they 
were  doing  or  would  do. 

It  is  rather  easy  wit  to  work  the 
"  deadly  parallel "  between  what  Sir 
Edward  Grey  said  Britain  would  do  in 
defence  of  Servia  and  the  unhappy  fate  of 
the  Serbs.  It  is  rather  hard  not  to  jibe 
when  some  over-enthusiastic  Britisher 
talks  about  how  "  we  saved  Paris  "  or 
claims  that  the  Battles  of  Ypres  were 
*'  the  greatest  of  history." 

But  of  course  the  only  sound  point  of 
view  for  estimating  the  British  effort  is 
to  compare  what  they  have  done  with 
what  their  friends  and  enemies  expected 
them  to  do.  It  is  imposing.  The  Ger- 
mans thought  the  English  Army  was  neg- 
ligible, but  to-day  their  land  forces  are 
as  great  a  factor  in  the  war  as  their 
Navy. 

Free  nations   may  be  slow  to   start, 


16  MOBILISING 

wasteful  and  inefficient  by  nature.  They 
arc  normally  pacific  and  never  regard 
war  as  the  chief  end  of  man.  But 
France  and  Britain  have  proved  that  de- 
mocracies can  conquer  themselves,  they 
can  triumph  over  their  weaknesses.  No 
one  can  ever  say  again  that  democracies 
cannot  fight. 


There  are  endless  lessons  for  us  in  the 
experiences  of  France  and  Britain.  For 
nearly  three  years  they  have  been  strug- 
gling with  the  same  problems  we  now  have 
to  face.  They  have  had  some  stupendous 
successes,  and  have  made  some  monu- 
mental blunders.  In  their  adventures 
and  misadventures  we  will  find  the  sign- 
posts towards  safety,  and  also  the  dan- 
ger signals,  on  the  road  before  us. 


The  first  and  most  outstanding  polit- 
ical lesson  of  this  war  is  that  in  times  of 
crisis,  democracies  will  trust  their  gov- 


DEMOCRACY  17 

ernments  and  will  be  lavish  with  money 
and  men  and  effort  in  their  defence. 
Imperial  Germany,  where  "  dut}-  to  the 
state  "  has  been  taught  for  a  generation 
while  liberty-loving  nations  were  empha- 
sising "  the  Rights  of  Man  and  Citizen," 
has  not  secured  greater  sacrifices  from 
its  people  than  Republican  France  and 
Liberal  Britain. 

The  Lesson  of  Europe  is  explicit  in 
this  matter.  And  it  should  be  of  great 
comfort  to  Mr.  Wilson  and  his  advisers. 
No  request  from  the  democratic  govern- 
ments has  been  refused  by  the  people. 

There  is  only  one  qualification.  The 
Call  must  be  clear. 

This  point  was  illustrated  by  the  long- 
drawn-out  and  distressing  controversy 
in  England  over  conscription.  Parlia- 
ment never  refused  to  vote  any  measure 
demanded  by  the  Ministry,  and  the  peo- 
ple never  resisted  any  sacrifice  called  for 
by  Parliament.  The  unrest  was  caused 
by  lack  of  clarity.  If  Kitchener  had 
calmly  said  that  Universal  Service  was 


18  MOBILISING 

necessary  the  nation  would  have  con- 
sented at  any  time.  But  he  made  no 
such  definite  statement.  Was  it  a  ser- 
ious demand  of  the  General  Staff  or  did 
the  Tories  consider  agitation  on  the  sub- 
ject good  tactics  to  drive  the  Liberals 
from  power  ?  Such  mystification  still  ex- 
ists. Very  many  people  in  England  have 
told  me  that  they  are  uncertain  whether 
the  final  passage  of  the  Conscription  Bill 
was  based  on  military  necessity  or  party 
expedienc}^,  whether  its  advocates  were 
attacking  the  Kaiser  or  Mr.  Asquith. 

It  has  been  quite  the  same  in  France. 
No  sacrifice  which  was  clearly  asked  for 
has  been  refused.  But  the  people  have 
been  deeply  suspicious  of  partisan  in- 
trigue during  the  war.  They  say  to  the 
politicians :  "  Tell  us  clearly  what  you 
need  to  win.  We,  who  are  ready  to  for- 
get our  personal  interests  and  give  our 
lives  in  defence  of  our  country,  ask  you 
to  sacrifice  your  passion  for  getting  or 
keeping  your  party  in  power." 

This  is  the  great  heartening  lesson  for 


DEMOCRACY  19 

us.  The  citizens  of  democratic  countries 
stand  ready  for  any  sacrifice  to  defend 
their  political  faith.  Our  Administra- 
tion can  get  from  us  anything  it  really 
needs.  We  are  not  more  craven  than 
the  peoples  of  France  and  Britain.  Let 
the  need  be  made  evident  and  we  will  meet 
it. 


There  are  two  errors  into  which 
France  and  Britain  fell  at  first  and  from 
which  they  have  only  slowly  recovered. 
It  would  be  well  for  us  to  avoid  them. 

The  first  and  most  pernicious  was 
"  The  Short  War  Fallacy."  No  one  ex- 
pected the  struggle  to  last  many  months. 
Every  one  thought  Kitchener  was  bluff- 
ing when  he  said,  "  Three  years."  And 
so  at  first  every  proposal  which  would 
take  more  than  a  few  months  to  mature 
was  rejected.  Those  who  tried  to  be 
far-sighted  were  laughed  down. 

France,  as  much  as  Britain,  was  a  vic- 
tim of  this  Short  War  Fallacy.     There 


9.0  MOBILISING 

has  of  late  been  hot  criticism  of  Joffre 
for  not  having  built  a  railroad  to  Ver- 
dun. For  although  the  motor  trucks 
managed  to  save  the  city,  the  lack  of  bet- 
ter communications  cost  France  thou- 
sands of  lives.  But  it  takes  time  to 
build  a  railroad  and  nobody  thought  the 
war  would  last  as  long. 

Very  early  in  1915  it  became  evident 
that  the  volunteer  sj^stem  in  England  was 
missing  many  men  who  might  well  go  and 
was  taking  in  their  stead  irreplacea.ble 
workers  from  the  mines  and  factories. 
It  was  obvious  that  a  military  and  in- 
dustrial census  was  desirable.  But  it 
was  postponed  and  postponed  because  it 
would  take  time  and  no  one  thought 
there  would  be  time  enough.  At  last, 
when  the  need  was  pressing,  the  work 
was  done  by  amateurs,  hurriedly  ajjd  in- 
accurately. 

The  French  thought  the  war  would  be 
over  so  quickly  that  there  would  be  no 
time  to  manufacture  munitions,  so  they 
rushed  too  many  men  into  uniform  and 


DEMOCRACY  21 

let  the  factory  fires  go  out.  For  two 
years  they  were  sending  men  back  from 
the  front  to  resuscitate  their  industries. 
In  a  hundred  and  one  ways  —  in  their 
efforts  to  reorganise  their  political  ma- 
cliinery  to  meet  the  crisis,  in  their  fiscal 
arrangements,  in  their  diplomacy,  and 
even  in  their  strategy  —  France  and 
Britain  were  handicapped  by  this  Short 
War  Fallacy. 


The  second  great  constant  source  of 
trouble,  noticeable  all  through  the  strug- 
gle to  get  France  and  Britain  fully  mo- 
bilised, has  been  the  difficult}'-  in  finding  a 
formula  to  differentiate  temporary  emer- 
gency proposals  from  permanent  meas- 
ures. 

Everywhere  individuals  and  parties 
have  attempted  to  use  the  war  as  a  pre- 
text to  fasten  permanently  on  the  nation 
measures  in  which  they  were  interested. 
Prohibitionists  in  France  and  England 
have  tried  to  utilise  this   crisis  to  put 


22  MOBILISING 

through  their  reforms ;  but  the  liquor  in- 
terests, fearing  permanent  interference 
with  their  profits,  have  successfully  re- 
sisted. As  an  emergency  measure  — 
for  the  duration  of  the  war  —  it  might 
have  been  accepted. 

In  the  financing  of  the  war,  the  Eng- 
lish have  been  more  adroit  in  this  regard 
than  the  French.  They  have  enacted  ex- 
ceedingly heavy  war  taxes,  under  which 
many  people  in  England  are  paying  more 
than  a  quarter  of  their  income.  But 
there  has  been  little  opposition,  for  few 
people  of  wealth  are  so  selfish  as  to  fight 
against  emergency  taxes  in  times  of  cri- 
sis. The  French  Cliamhre  des  Deputes^ 
however,  was  already  discussing  an  in- 
come tax  law  before  hostilities  broke  out. 
Its  partisans  tried  to  use  the  war  as  a 
pretext  to  force  it  through  as  a  perma- 
nent fiscal  reform.  As  a  result  all  the 
peace-time  opponents  of  the  bill  resisted 
fiercely  and  an  unnecessary  strain  was 
put  on  the  "  Union  sacree." 

But  on  the  other  hand,  in  their  efforts 


DEMOCRACY  23 

to  reorganise  their  political  practice,  the 
British  have  had  more  trouble  than  the 
French.  The  Members  of  Parliament  at 
Westminster  have  not  made  it  clear  that 
their  attempts  to  adapt  the  governmen- 
tal machinery  to  this  temporary  emer- 
gency of  war  are  not  permanent  assaults 
on  democracy.  The  present  govern- 
ment of  France  is  more  of  a  dictatorship 
than  that  of  Britain.  But  one  hears 
frightened  cries  of  "  Dictatorship " 
more  often  from  English  Liberals  than 
from  the  French  Republicans.  In  the 
last  Cabinet  Reorganisation  in  France 
the  Chambre  gave  the  Ministry  power  to 
make  laws,  without  consulting  them,  by 
executive  edict.  And  the  French  people 
have  not  only  readily  consented  to  this 
radical  centralisation  of  power  but  have 
actively  demanded  it.  Why?  Because 
it  is  so  obviously  a  temporary  arrange- 
ment. 

Everywhere  —  in  finance,  in  political 
organisation  and  in  industrial  intensi- 
fication—  mobilisation  has  been  greatly 


24^  MOBILISING 

facilitated  by  assurances  that  emergency 
war  measures  are  only  temporary. 


There  is  for  us  one  other  general  les- 
son in  this  spectacle  of  the  mustering  of 
Europe.  Back  of  all  the  outward,  ma- 
terial mobilisation  there  must  be  an  in- 
ward, spiritual  mobilisation. 

In  modern  w^ar,  if  there  is  anything 
like  equality  in  population  and  resources, 
that  nation,  the  greatest  proportion  of 
whose  citizens  feel  that  victory  is  more 
important  than  their  private  affairs,  will 
win.  The  "  Business  as  usual "  frame 
of  mind  is  the  absolute  anti-thesis  of  ef- 
fective mobilisation.  The  Res  Puhlica 
must  come  before  individual  gain.  The 
more  people,  who  realise  that  we  are  at 
w^ar,  who  are  disturbed  by  it,  the  more 
hearty  will  be  the  unanimity  we  will  have 
in  support  of  an  energetic  policy  which 
will  bring  hostilities  to  a  speedy  end. 
Every  citizen  of  the  Republic  who  is  in- 
different to  the  war  is  dead  weight.     And' 


DEMOCRACY  25 

those  who  win  profit  from  it  arc  more 
dangerous  than  enemy  soldiers. 

Here  again  we  have  the  example  of 
Britain.  As  her  interest  grew,  as  more 
and  more  of  her  people  felt  the  war,  her 
power  grew. 

First,  last  and  all  the  time,  the  ef- 
fectiveness of  our  warfare  will  depend  on 
the  am.ount  of  ardor  we  throw  into  it. 
So  the  prime  duty  of  our  Government, 
the  first  step  in  any  mobilisation,  must  be 
the  awakening  of  our  interest.  There 
must  be  some  loud,  clear  Call  to  Arms, 
which  will  electrify  Public  Opinion. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   MOBILISATION    OF    PUBLIC    OPINION 

THE  Tocsin  must  ring  clear. 
Mobilisation  is  an  act,  not  an 
accident.  It  is  not  something  which  will 
happen  to  us,  it  is  something  we  must  do. 
And  unless  we  hold  the  fact  firm  in  our 
minds  that  war  is  something  which  con- 
cerns every  one  of  us  we  will  make  a  dis- 
graceful muddle  of  it.  Nobody  knows 
how  much  of  our  strength  we  will  need 
to  put  forth,  but  the  first  step  must  be 
an  act  of  will.  We  must  7X)ant  to  mo- 
bilise. 

The  Lesson  of  Europe  is  precise  on 
this  point  —  a  democratic  Government 
can  stimulate  this  mobilising  frame  of 
mind.  There  are  many  agencies,  many 
methods,  which  it  can  use  to  arouse  the 

nation. 

26 


PUBLIC  OPINION  rt 

First  of  all,  the  Government  must  dis- 
pel all  uncertainty  by  an  honest  state- 
ment of  why  we  are  forced  to  fight,  of 
what  sacrifices  it  expects  of  us  and  the 
goal  for  which  we  strive. 

The  British  responded  less  quickly 
than  the  French,  and  the  fact  that 
France  was  actually  invaded  does  not 
account  for  all  the  difference.  In  Brit- 
ain the  Call  to  Arms  was  not  clear.  In- 
stead of  being  incited  to  extraordinary 
effort,  the  people  were  lulled  into  indif- 
fei'ence.  "  Business  as  usual,"  was  set 
before  the  Nation  as  a  patriotic  motto, 
and  the  people  who  accepted  this  advice 
and  went  about  their  usual  business  were 
not  helping  in  mobilisation.  It  was  only 
gradually,  as  this  attitude  was  aban- 
doned, that  the  force  of  Britain  grew. 

Their  government  never  would  have 
given  the  people  this  wrong  lead  if  they 
had  not  been  victims  of  The  Short  War 
Fallacy.  No  enlightened  government 
will  ever  repeat  that  mistake.  It  is  im- 
possible to  foretell  how  long  hostilities 


S8  MOBILISING 

will  last.  "  Business  as  usual "  means 
delay  in  getting  started.  It  must  be  the 
first  duty  of  our  Government  to  stir  us 
into  a  realisation  of  what  it  means  to 

fight. 

An  explicit  statement  of  war  aims  is 
especially  necessary  for  a  nation  of 
mixed  population  like  ours.  The  Call  of 
Race  is  not  strong  with  us  and,  to  those 
who  hear  it,  its  message  is  contradictory. 
We  cannot  expect  our  people  of  German 
blood  to  fight  enthusiastically  for 
Britain.  We  cannot  expect  our  large 
Jewish  population  to  be  pro-Tsar.  But 
all  of  us  are  pro-Liberal. 

That  must  be  the  key-note  of  any 
war  we  are  to  wage  effectively.  The 
ideal  of  democratic  liberty  will  rally 
more  of  us  than  any  issue  between  one 
nation  and  another.  The  republican 
revolution  in  Russia  and  the  struggle  of 
the  new  government  to  get  a  start  in  the 
face  of  the   armed   menace  of  Prussian 


PUBLIC  OPINION  29 

Autocracy  has  already  made  a  tremen- 
dous appeal  to  our  people.  If  we  are  to 
fight  worthily  it  must  be  for  some  object 
which  we  hold  to  passionately.  All  good 
wars  have  been  Crusades. 

If  we  arc  to  abandon  our  isolation 
and  go  crusading  in  the  cause  of 
Democratic  Righteousness  abroad  —  and 
events  have  decided  that  matter  for  us 
—  we  have,  in  the  President's  Address 
to  the  Senate  in  regard  to  the  organisa- 
tion of  the  world  for  peace,  an  ideal  plat- 
form. 

Not  only  in  its  words  but  in  its  spirit 
and  its  occasion  it  expressed  us  as  a 
nation.  We  were  very  reluctant  to  in- 
tervene in  a  purely  European  contro- 
versy. In  the  chaos  of  conflicting  ac- 
cusations it  was  hard  for  many  of  us  to 
take  sides  as  between  the  two  groups  of 
belligerents.  We  tried  to  hold  to  an 
aloof  Neutrality,  protecting  only  our  own 
rights  and  the  general  principle  of  In- 
ternational Law.     The  thought  of  fight- 


30  MOBILISING 

ing  over  a  technicality  was  repugnant  to 
us  —  although,  God  knows,  we  w^re  af- 
fronted often  enough  by  both  sides. 

But  gradually  the  realisation  grew 
that  —  w  illy  nilly  —  we  inhere  in  the  war, 
that  every  action  or  inaction  of  ours  in- 
fluenced the  fate  of  Europe.  Each  side 
appealed  to  us  to  enforce  our  just  claims 
against  the  other.  Should  we  continue 
to  stay  out?  We  were  already  in!  Our 
official  Neutrality  was  only  a  make-shift 
—  giving  us  the  opportunity  to  be  delib- 
erate. The  question  before  us  ceased  to 
be:  "Shall  we  go  in?"  and  became 
"  When  and  in  what  manner  shall  we  ad- 
mit that  we  are  in?  " 

And  side  by  side  with  this  gradual 
change  in  our  understanding  of  the  situ- 
ation, this  slow  forming  realisation  that 
any  statement  of  aloofness  was  a  pre- 
tence, there  grew  in  our  minds  the  con- 
viction that  it  was  a  conflict  not  only  be- 
tween nations,  not  only  between  groups 
of  statesmen,  but  a  more  fundamental, 
less  easily  definable  clash  between  ideas. 


PUBLIC  OPINION  31 

Such  struggles  are  always  confused  by 
side  issues,  and  bleared  by  misstatements, 
but  as  the  months  passed  the  main  issue 
began  to  clarify.  European,  American 
and  Asiatic  politics  are  now  merged  into 
world  politics,  and  the  world  in  which  we 
live  cannot  exist  half-slave,  half-free. 
Napoleon  said  that  within  a  century 
Europe  would  be  either  Republican  or 
Cossack.  The  symbol  of  tyranny  has 
changed  in  these  hundred  years.  De- 
mocracy to-day  does  not  fear  the  wild 
Cossacks  of  the  steppes  —  they  are  fight- 
ing on  our  side  —  but  the  Prussian  drill 
sergeant.  It  is  the  struggle  which  Na- 
poleon foresaw.  Whether  the  Tsar  or 
the  Sultan  shall  pray  in  Santa  Sophia  is 
of  small  concern  to  us.  But  we  have  no 
greater  concern  than  to  see  to  it  that  de- 
mocracy does  not  perish  from  the  earth. 
The  quarrel  between  Austria  and 
Servia  has  become  ancient  history.  The 
controversy  over  who  first  broke  the  law 
of  the  sea  now  seems  academic.  Whether 
this    or   that   diplomatic   move   of   for- 


32  MOBILISING 

mer  Ministers  of  Foreign  Affairs  was 
wise  seems  of  small  moment.  Whatever 
the  "  causes  "  of  the  war,  an  issue  has 
grown  up  out  of  the  struggle  itself.  It 
is  an  issue  on  which  we,  as  Americans, 
can  take  sides  —  an  issue  which  we  can 
not,  without  treason  to  our  own  ideals, 
avoid.  It  is  the  conflict  between  the 
forces  of  reaction  and  the  impulse  to- 
wards liberation. 

With  great  adroitness,  Mr.  Wilson, 
in  his  request  for  peace  terms,  his  Ad- 
dress to  the  Senate,  and  at  his  Inaugura- 
tion, has  helped  to  clarify  the  issue. 

Gradually  —  too  gradually  for  some 
of  us  who  were  impatient  —  the  Presi- 
dent has  led  the  nation  to  unanimity  on 
this  platform  that  not  only  national 
government,  but  the  governance  of  the 
world,  must  rest  on  the  consent  of  the 
governed.  We  draw  the  sword  neither 
in  resentment  against  violations  of  our 
rights,  nor  in  defiance  at  insults,  but  to 
assert  our  solidarity  with  all  those  who 
would  be  free. 


PUBLIC  OPINION  33 

Mr.  Wilson  has  not  only  unified  our 
own  public  opinion  by  his  discourses  on 
the  basis  of  peace.  His  words  also  have 
been  heard  abroad.  They  have  been 
welcomed  by  the  Liberals  of  Europe  as 
a  new  and  more  inspiring  statement  of 
their  faith.  The  freemen  of  Russia  have 
responded.  His  statement  of  our  na- 
tional ideals  has  helped  to  clarify  not 
only  our  own  ideas  but  also  those  of  our 
comrades  in  arms. 

I  have  been  told  by  people  jvho  call 
themselves  "  realists "  that  Perpetual 
Peace  is  irrealisable,  that  Mr.  Wilson's 
ideal  is  a  dream. 

A  dream  .P  So  was  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  So  was  "  Liberie, 
EgalitSy  F  rat  emit  e.''^  Nothing  better 
to  fight  for  has  ever  been  invented  than 
dreams. 

The  French  raise  their  levee  en  masse 
to  the  cry  "  La  Patrie  en  dangeur.'' 
We  have  a  broader,  more  inspiring  war 
cry,  "  Democracy  —  the  Hope  of  Hu- 
manity • —  is  in  danger !  " 


34  MOBILISING 

You  may  call  such  idealism  "  senti- 
mental," if  you  will.  But  in  this  sense 
Democracy  is  sentimental.  There  is  no 
clearer  lesson  from  this  European  con- 
flict. Some  crafty  Englishmen  see  the 
conquest  of  Mesopotamia  and  its  vast  po- 
tential wealth  as  the  prize  to  struggle 
for.  Some  believe  and  argue  and  write 
that  the  Balance  of  Power  in  the  Near 
East  is  the  main  issue.  Some  French- 
men, like  Maurice  Bar  res,  want  to  annex 
the  Rhine  provinces  of  Germany;  some 
are  interested  in  the  Protectorate  over 
Syria.  Some  Russians  saw  in  the  war  a 
reaffirmation  of  Autocracy.  But  such 
men  do  not  volunteer.  It  was  the  Eng- 
lishmen who  believed  in  a  duty  to  Bel- 
gium, who  answered  the  Call.  It  is  the 
Frenchmen  who  believe  that  the  gifts  of 
the  Great  Revolution  are  worth  defend- 
ing, whom  you  will  find  in  the  trenches. 
It  is  the  Russians  who  look  forward 
to  liberty,  who  give  their  lives  for  their 
country. 

Perhaps  we  will  acquire  larger  influ- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  35 

ence  in  the  world  by  delivering  the  coup 
de  grace  to  German  ambitions.  Perhaps 
it  will  enable  us  to  negotiate  profitable 
commercial  treaties.  Perhaps  we  will 
win  glory  and  applause.  But  we  will  not 
mobilise  efficiently  for  any  such  aims.  If 
we  are  to  fight  well,  it  must  be  for  an 
ideal  —  for  a  dream. 

The  Call  to  Arms  must  be  definite  and 
explicit  —  a  ringing  inspiration. 


To  further  the  mobilisation  of  Public 
Opinion,  the  Government  must  also  give 
us  a  detailed  plan  of  action.  The  will 
weakens  in  idleness.  We  must  be  given 
an  answer  to  the  question :  "  What  can 
I  do?  "  Some  of  us  can  do  nothing  but 
sit  tight.  Some  of  us  can  do  no  more 
than  help  the  general  cause  by  flight 
acts  of  self-denial.  Some  of  us  can  do 
our  bit  in  clerical  work.  The  factories, 
the  laboratories,  the  training  camps  will 
have  place  for  some  of  us.  There  will 
be  Red  Cross  bandages  to  roll,  shirts  to 


36  MOBILISING 

be  sewn,  emergency  constabulary  work 
and  recruiting  posters  to  be  drawn  by 
artists.  The  list  of  various  kinds  of  war 
work  is  interminable.  And  the  more 
every  individual  citizen  feels  that  he  or 
she  has  work  to  do,  the  more  vivid  and 
firm  and  steadfast  will  grow  the  Will  to 
Win. 

We  must  also  know  what  the  Gov- 
ernment is  doing  and  planning  to  do. 
Timid  advisers  will  urge  secrecy,  but 
the  Government  needs  publicity.  Noth- 
ing will  do  more  to  hearten  us,  to  stim- 
ulate the  mobilisation  of  Public  Opinion, 
than  knowledge  of  what  is  being  done. 
And,  if  we  are  doing  well,  nothing  will 
the  more  dishearten  the  enemy.  We 
must  be  told  which  Munition  Plants, 
which  Government  Bureaus,  which  Train- 
ing C^mps  are  doing  the  best,  so  that  we 
can  cheer  them.  We  must  be  told  which 
are  laggard  so  we  can  jog  them  upc 
The  fostering  of  a  wholesome  rivalry  be- 
tween the  various  States  will  keep  things 
jumping.     We  ought  to  have  a  monthly 


PUBLIC  OPINION  37 

bulletin  telling  how  each  unit  in  the 
scheme  is  growing,  for  if  we  are  to  be 
kept  interested  we  must  know  the  plan  so 
we  can  check  up  progress  and  follow  the 
national  effort  intelligently. 


One  problem  which  we  must  face  at 
once  is  "  Censorship  vs.  Publicity." 

Doubtless  the  Devil  could  contrive 
some  worse  impediment  to  the  mobilisa- 
tion of  Public  Opinion  than  a  Censorship 
of  the  Press,  but  I  doubt  if  he  ever  did. 
The  blunders  of  the  French  and  British 
censors  have  been  so  stupid  that  it  is 
hard  to  escape  the  conviction  that  the 
idea  itself  is  inherently  stupid.  Free 
discussion  is  the  life-blood  of  democracy. 
Stop  one  and  you  stop  the  other.  The 
people  of  France  and  Britain  wanted  a 
more  efficient  war  than  they  were  get- 
ting, but  the  Censors  forbade  criticism. 
If  British  newspaper  men  had  not  at  last 
dared  to  risk  imprisonment  their  Army 


38  MOBILISING 

would  still  be  short  of  shells.  The  Cen- 
sorship in  Russia  made  it  impossible  to 
drive  traitors  out  of  office  except  by 
bloodshed. 

Military  "  experts  "  do  not  like  civil- 
ian criticism.  Generals  are  not  used  to 
reasoning  with  their  subordinates,  they 
do  not  argue  about  their  orders,  and  so 
they  do  not  like  to  explain  to  the  nation. 
They  bitterly  resent  criticism.  But  it 
does  them  good.  They  need  not  only 
our  criticism  but  our  help.  Our  General 
Staff  is  asking  for  authority  to  install 
an  exceedingly  drastic  censorship.  But 
even  if  they  forget  it,  let  us  at  least  keep 
this  lesson  of  the  European  war  in  mind: 
In  France  and  Britain  the  Censorship 
systems  devised  by  the  military  authori- 
ties did  not  work.  Nominally  intended 
to  keep  information  from  the  enemy,  they 
succeeded  mainly  in  keeping  news  from 
the  people  at  home.  They  proved  them- 
selves most  efficacious  in  sheltering  dis- 
honest army  furnishers  and  in  hiding 
from  the  public  the  ineptitude  of  some 


PUBLIC  OPINION  39 

in  high  command.  If  the  British  Mili- 
tary Censor  had  had  his  way  the  failure 
of  the  Ordnance  Officers  to  reorganise  the 
Munition  Industry  would  not  have  been 
discovered  in  time. 

No  organisation  ever  had  a  more  pas- 
sionate devotion  to  secrecy  than  the 
British  Admiralty,  but  even  the  Sea 
Lords  realised  at  last  that  they  were 
overdoing  it.  People  heard  so  little 
about  the  Navy  that  they  were  in  dan- 
ger of  forgetting  it.  So  Kipling  and 
Alfred  Noyes  and  others  were  called  in 
to  write  up  The  Fleet.  At  first  hostile 
to  all  publicity,  the  Admirals  are  now 
hiring  Press  Agents.  Any  branch  of  a 
democratic  government  is  in  a  bad  way, 
if  the  people  lose  interest  in  it. 

At  best  the  Censorship,  in  its  effects 
at  home,  is  purely  negative  —  an  effort 
to  keep  dangerous  or  misleading  ideas 
from  the  Public.  But  even  those  who 
were  strongest  in  their  advocacy  of  pro- 
tecting the  sheep  from  pernicious  or  sedi- 
tious ideas  admit  to-day  that  the  Censor 


40  MOBILISING 

has  had  only  negative  —  and  meagre  — 
success.  Bolder  spirits  have  trusted 
democratic  commonsense  even  in  the  heat 
of  war  and  have  tried  the  positive  method 
of  combating  dangerous  movements  of 
opinion  by  Publicity,  by  constantly  giv- 
ing the  man  in  the  street  something 
wholesome  to  think  about. 

The  modern  soldier  realises  that  he 
needs  civilian  support  and  sympathy,  for 
the  old  theory  that  military  "  experts  " 
would  suffice  to  win  a  war  has  fallen  into 
disrepute.  Lloyd-George  organising  the 
Munition  work,  reorganising  the  War 
Office,  is  broadly  typical.  The  courses 
in  chemistry  in  the  military  academies 
were  not  adequate  for  handling  the  prob- 
lem of  poison  gas.  Modern  strategy  is 
based  on  transportation,  and  one  gets 
better  railroading  experience  in  Civil  Life 
than  in  the  Army.  And  even  the  Navy 
needs  to  use  the  brains  of  the  Merchant 
Marine. 

While  there  still  are  old  fogies  in 
uniform    who    cling    to    "  the-public-be- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  41 

damned  "  theory  and  would  rather  lose  a 
battle  than  accept  help  from  a  mere  ci- 
vilian, the  type  of  officer  who  is  being 
produced  hy  this  war,  educated  not  in  a 
school  of  theory  but  on  the  field,  realises 
that  victory  in  our  day  depends  not  only 
on  armies  but  on  civilians  as  well.  War 
—  the  Absolute  War  which  the  Germans 
have  unloosed  —  is  national  in  the  widest 
sense. 

A  modern  Army  lives  on  the  support 
of  the  civilians.  It  is  recruited  from 
the  people  at  home,  supported  by  them, 
fed,  clothed  and  above  all  munitioned 
by  them.  There  is  no  more  distinction 
between  civilian  and  soldier  than  there 
is  between  the  base  and  apex  of  a  pyra- 
mid. The  officer  who  has  attended  the 
school  of  this  European  war  realises 
that  he  is  lost  if  the  people  at  home  for- 
get him. 

And  so,  if  the  British  and  French  Gen- 
eral Staff  were  to  draw  up  a  censorship 
law  to-day,  it  would  be  very  different 
from  the   regulations  they  proposed  in 


42  MOBILISING 

the  summer  of  1914.  It  would  be  very 
different  from  the  present  project  of  the 
inexperienced  officers  of  our  War  Col- 
lege. It  would  be  designed  exclusively 
to  prevent  the  giving  of  treasonable  in- 
formation to  the  enemy. 

With  this  limitation  it  would  leave  the 
door  open  wide  for  popular  discussion  of 
military  problems.  It  would  make  it  im- 
possible for  the  great  power  of  the  Cen- 
sor to  fall  into  the  hands  of  any  clique 
of  intriguing  soldiers  or  politicians  who 
might  use  it  to  further  their  private  am- 
bitions. It  would  welcome  the  freest 
criticism  of  grafters  and  incompetents, 
in  or  out  of  uniform,  who  impede  the 
efficient  conduct  of  the  campaign.  And  it 
would  go  further.  It  would  organise  a 
publicity  bureau,  which  would  constantly 
keep  before  the  public  the  work  and 
the  needs  of  the  men  at  the  front.  It 
would  requisition  space  on  the  front 
page  of  every  newspaper;  it  would  call 
for  a  "  draft "  of  trained  writers 
to  feed  "  Army  stories  "  to  the  public ; 


PUBLIC  OPINION  43 

it    would    organise    a    Corps    of    Press 
Agents. 

The  experienced  soldier,  who  subordi- 
nates everything  to  the  efficiency  of 
the  Army,  wants  publicity  for  purely 
military  reasons.  But  it  is  even  more 
necessary  for  those  who  have  the  re- 
sponsibility for  the  political  life  of  the 
nation.  In  order  to  make  a  democracy 
fight  wholeheartedly  it  is  necessary  to 
make  them  understand  the  situation.  So 
in  every  country  as  soon  as  hostilities  be- 
gan, the  Governments  organised  propa- 
ganda campaigns  to  make  the  struggle 
comprehensible  and  popular.  The  poli- 
ticians unloosed  their  silver  tongues. 
Poets  and  publicists  were  mobilised. 
And  just  as  a  skilled  orator  feels  his 
way  with  a  strange  audience,  trying  one 
theme  after  another,  dropping  each  one 
quickly  if  it  does  not  stir  response,  and 
at  last  hits  on  the  note  which  moves  them, 
so  the  various  Governments  gradually 
settled  down  to  a  theme  of  war  which 
brought  results. 


44  MOBILISING 

France  had  little  need  for  such  work. 
The  fact  of  invasion  was  more  eloquent 
than  any  oratory. 

The  Germans  after  some  fumbling 
seem  to  have  settled  down  to  a  semi- 
mystic  hate  propaganda  — "  God  punish 
our  enemies."  In  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence between  ideas  this  theme  has 
proved  for  them  the  most  fit  to  survive. 

In  Britain  the  official  propaganda  has 
been  more  varied  and  supple.  The  ap- 
peal which  brought  the  first  wave  of 
volunteers  was  "  Bleeding  Belgium,"  the 
duty  of  the  strong  as  good  sportsmen 
to  defend  the  weak.  Then  the  attempt 
was  made  to  stir  national  pride  by  post- 
ers quoting  the  Kaiser's  alleged  insulting 
reference  to  "  the  contemptible  little 
English  Army."  An  effort  was  made  to 
frighten  the  people  by  the  supposed  dan- 
ger of  Invasion.  Somewhat  later,  pic- 
tures were  displayed  of  the  famous 
treaty  which  had  been  called  "  a  scrap  of 
paper."  Every  note  was  sounded  from 
rage  against  "  the  baby  killers  "  to  fidel- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  45 

ity  to  the  pledged  word  as  the  basis  of 
international  relations.  But  by  far  the 
greatest  response  came  on  the  appeal  to 
democratic  idealism  —  the  issue  between 
popular  rule  and  military  despotism. 

We  may  be  thankful  that  a  great  deal 
of  this  work  of  arousing  us  to  a  unified 
attitude  towards  the  conflict  was  accom- 
plished by  Mr.  Wilson  before  our  diplo- 
matic relations  were  broken  with  Ger- 
many. The  democratic  keynote  of  our 
war  had  been  sounded  before  it  began. 
It  must  be  kept  ever  ringing  in  our 
ears. 

Public  Opinion  cannot  be  sane  and 
wholesome  without  freedom  to  discuss 
and  argue,  to  criticise  and  oppose.  The 
creation  of  a  Censorship  over  political 
debate,  in  speech  or  printed  word,  is  like 
putting  a  "  nigger  on  the  safety  valve." 
It  means  a  vast  and  appalling  ultimate 
risk  for  a  small  immediate  gain.  The 
appearance  of  unanimity  which  the  Tsar 
won  by  imprisoning  the  opposition,  the 
semblance  of  content  which  is  gained  by 


46  MOBILISING 

silencing  discontent,  the  order  which 
comes  from  tyranny,  is  fraudulent,  un- 
stable and  dangerous.  It  is  utterly  un- 
democratic. And  if  this  is  not  to  be  a 
democratic  war  in  the  widest  and  noblest 
sense  it  is  not  worth  waging. 

It  is  hot  enough  that  the  objects  of 
our  war  should  be  in  accord  with  demo- 
cratic idealism.  This  must  be  equally 
true  of  its  methods. 

Here  again  the  lessons  to  be  gained 
from  France  and  Britain  are  illuminat- 
ing. In  both  countries  there  have  been 
attempts  to  discredit  and  overthrow  de- 
mocracy in  internal  politics.  Every- 
where the  Reactionists  have  raised  their 
heads,  for  the  troubled  waters  of  na- 
tional crisis  offered  them  encouragement 
and  opportunity. 

At  the  very  beginning  of  the  war 
the  French  Royalist  faction  came  to 
life.  An  obscure  prince  of  the  House  of 
Orleans  had  proclamations  posted  up  on 
the  walls  of  Paris  in  which  he  offered  to 


PUBLIC  OPINION  47 

"  save  "  France.  The  priests  began  to 
preach  that  Invasion  was  divine  chastise- 
ment for  the  sin  of  disrespect  towards 
Home ;  and  after  the  tide  turned  at  the 
Marne,  they  brought  Jeanne  d'Arc  out 
of  heaven  to  account  for  "  the  Miracle." 
But  the  French  statesmen  were  astute 
enough  to  recognise  that  no  minority 
could  win  the  war.  So  they  quickly  re- 
assured the  great  Republican  majority 
and  the  Reaction  was  shown  to  be  ridicu- 
lously weak. 

But  in  Britain  the  lines  were  not  so 
sharply  drawn.  The  Liberals  were  not 
strong  enough  —  or  did  not  think  them- 
selves strong  enough  —  to  bear  the  re- 
sponsibilities of  the  struggle  alone,  and 
so  Asquith  invited  Tories  into  a  Coalition 
Cabinet.  Inevitably  the  Liberal  major- 
ity of  Britain  has  been  troubled,  its  en-' 
thusiasm  for  the  war  dampened,  its  loy- 
alty strained,  by  the  spectacle  of  notori- 
ous anti-democrats  like  Lord  Lansdowne, 
Milner  and  Sir  Edward  Carson  rising  to 
power. 


48  MOBILISING 

The  Irish  question,  although  excess- 
ively complicated  and  difficult  for  outsid- 
ers to  understand,  illustrates  my  point. 
No  national  unanimity  is  possible  in 
Britain,  not  even  a  working  majority, 
which  does  not  include  the  Liberals,  the 
Labour  Party  and  the  Irish.  All  three 
of  these  groups  are  pledged  to  Home 
Rule.  The  interest  of  the  Irish  Nation- 
alists in  the  Bill  is  obvious.  The  La- 
bourites and  the  Liberals  are  pledged  to 
it  from  a  profound  conviction  that  it  is 
a  measure  of  democratic  justice  too  long 
delayed.  But  in  order  to  gain  the  sup- 
port —  and  it  was  only  lip  service  —  of 
the  small  group  of  Die  Hard  Tories,  As- 
quith  gravely  affronted  and  discouraged 
the  big  majority  on  which  he  should  have 
based  his  policy. 

To  many  British  democrats,  the  Coa- 
lition Cabinet  and  more  recently  the 
Lloyd-George  reorganisation,  has  seemed 
a  triumph  for  the  Reaction.  For  al- 
though there  is  good  reason  to  believe 
that  the  British  Empire  —  like  the  Rus- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  49 

sian  —  will  emerge  from  this  war  moie 
liberal  than  ever  before,  still  the  present 
trend  towards  Toryism  is  disquieting. 
The  Nation,  the  leading  Liberal  weekly, 
published  one  discouraged  editorial  to  the 
effect  that  the  Germans  had  already  won 
the  war,  as  the  Junker  class  was  trium- 
phant at  home,  Britain  rapidly  becoming 
Prussianised. 

This  is  a  lesson  for  us  to  bear  in  mind. 
Anything  which  tends  to  discourage  the 
democratic  element  of  our  nation  —  any 
excessive  profits  for  the  Munition  Mak- 
ers, any  return  to  power  of  the  Old 
Guard  —  will  distinctly  lower  the  effi- 
ciency of  our  mobilisation. 

Public  Opinion,  with  us,  finds  its  voice 
through  Congress.  And  the  frame  of 
mind  which  befits  us  in  this  time  of  stress 
will  need  an  exceptional  political  organ- 
isation to  give  it  expression.  Our  par- 
tisan politics  have  been  bad  enough 
in  peace  times,  and  the  closing  scenes  of 
the    64th    Senate    showed    us    only    too 


50  MOBILISING 

clearly  the  dangers  of  our  present  ma- 
chinery.    It  does  not  work  in  a  crisis. 

The  affairs  of  the  Nation  are  too  ur- 
gent at  this  moment  to  permit  of  a  stud- 
ied reorganisation  of  our  parliamentary 
practice,  and  so  it  was  unfortunate  that 
in  the  first  days  of  the  Special  Session  of 
the  new  Senate  they  attempted  to  reach 
a  final  decision  in  the  cloture  rule.  Two 
things  were  obvious  in  their  debate.  In 
the  face  of  this  unusual  tension  an 
overwhelming  majority  of  the  Senators 
wanted  to  put  an  end  to  undemocratic 
filibusters.  But  also  a  large  number 
were  profoundly  distrustful  of  any  per- 
manent limitation  of  their  right  to  full 
and  free  discussion.  After  much  pa- 
laver they  arrived  at  a  not  very  satisfac- 
tory compromise.  No  one  was  suffi- 
ciently adroit  to  propose  a  temporary 
rule  to  meet  the  emergency. 

Public  Opinion  is  disturbed  over  the 
prospect  of  the  New  Congress.  The 
House  of  Representatives  is  so  evenly 
divided  in  its  party  loyalties  that  no  one 


PUBLIC  OPINION  51 

can  foresee  what  it  will  do.  It  may 
fight  for  three  months  over  organisation, 
for  the  "  patronage  "  of  a  whole  session 
is  at  stake,  and  the  choice  of  a  Speaker 
now  will  undoubtedly  influence  the  next 
Congressional  elections.  So  the  dan- 
ger of  a  bitter  and  paralysing  parti- 
san struggle  in  the  work  of  organising 
the  House,  or  at  some  later  moment  in 
the  life  of  this  Congress,  is  obvious  to  us 
all.  Yet  no  one  doubts  that  a  large  ma- 
jority of  the  Congressmen  could  be 
brought  together  in  a  provisional  or- 
ganisation, which  would  not  threaten 
their  perennial  prerogatives  and  perqui- 
sites. 

What  we  need  is  a  National  Emer- 
gency Party. 

Many  patriots  have  raised  their  voices 
in  behalf  of  a  Party  Truce,  a  bi-parti- 
san organization  based  on  a  division  of 
spoils.  But  the  experiments  in  Coalition 
Government  tried  in  France  and  Britain 
did  not  work  well.  First  of  all  it  meant 
a   divided   responsibility,    allowing   each 


52  MOBILISING 

party  to  claim  credit  for  joint  suc- 
cesses, while  blaming  the  other  party  for 
every  failure.  But  the  principal  trouble 
arose  over  the  inevitable  intrusion  of  per- 
manent issues  into  the  temporary  ma- 
chinery. 

If  we  hope  to  avoid  their  blunders  we 
must  make  a  sharp  distinction  in  such 
matters.  Much  of  the  regular  life  of 
the  community  will  go  on  in  spite  of  war. 
The  schools  will  stay  open.  The  contro- 
versy between  osteopaths  and  the  ortho- 
dox priesthood  of  medicine  will  continue. 
The  Inter-State  Commerce  Commission 
will  still  have  to  fix  freight  rates  on  knit- 
ting needles  and  pencil  sharpeners. 
Harbors  will  have  to  be  dredged,  post- 
offices  built,  inspectors  appointed.  These 
matters  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  pres- 
ent crisis,  and  they  would  unnecessarily 
clog  and  strain  any  provisional  machin- 
ery. 

If  a  National  Emergency  Party  were 
formed,  pledges  of  co-operation  could  be 
secured  from  a  large  majority  of  Con- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  53 

gress.  Thej  should  then  prepare  a  spe- 
cial Slate  —  Temporary  Speaker  and 
Chairmen  for  the  Standing  Committees 
of  Foreign  Affairs,  Array,  Navy  and. 
Finance.  They  should  choose  these  men 
irrespective  of  party  or  seniority,  solely 
on  the  basis  of  their  ability  and  good  re- 
pute. They  should  complete  their  or- 
ganisation like  the  old  parties,  appoint- 
ing whips  and  arranging  for  caucuses. 

In  each  House,  the  Temporary 
Speaker  and  the  chairmen  of  these  four 
committees  would  form  the  Emergency 
Committee.  On  their  motion  Congress 
would  resolve  itself  into  an  Emergency 
Session.  The  Members  pledged  to  the 
National  Party  would  then  form  the  ma- 
jority necessary  to  consider  and  act  on 
Bills  presented  to  meet  the  military  sit- 
uation. 

As  soon  as  the  first  batch  of  urgent 
war  measures  was  disposed  of,  the  Na- 
tional Majority  would  dissolve  on  the  old 
familiar  partisan  lines,  and  Congress 
could  proceed  to  its  regular  organisation 


54  MOBILISING 

and  the  routine  of  ordinary  business 
until  the  need  arose  to  revive  the  Provi- 
sional organisation.  No  question  should 
be  put  by  the  Temporary  Speaker  which 
did  not  affect  the  crisis.  The  Perma- 
nent Organisation  should  deal  with  all 
routine  business. 

There  is  no  use  now  in  regretting  that 
we  do  not  have  a  responsible  ministry  like 
the  French,  nor  the  chance  of  a  new 
general  election  like  the  British.  We 
have  chosen  the  President  and  Congress 
for  a  term  of  jesiYS.  It  is  bad  enough  to 
have  them  wrangle  in  the  piping  times  of 
peace.  They  will  very  quickly  throw 
Public  Opinion  into  disarray  and  render 
efficient  mobilisation  impossible,  if  they 
do  not  at  once  work  out  an  organisation 
which  will  run  smoothly.  And  the  more 
clearly  the  distinction  is  made  between 
the  permanent  and  the  temporary,  the 
easier  it  will  be  to  find  a  solution. 

If  the  Administration  is  to  rally  to  it 
a  united  nation  it  is  equally  necessary 
to  have  a  reorganisation  of  the  Execu- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  55 

tive  Branch  of  the  Government.  The 
best  thmg  about  our  present  system 
of  Cabinets  is  that  they  are  united  by 
the  allegiance  of  all  their  members  to 
one  political  party,  but  the  price  we  pay 
for  this  spirit  of  accord  in  the  Cabinet 
is  that  the  best  brains  in  the  other  party 
are  not  utilised.  We  do  not  want  the 
Executive  Council  thrown  into  disunion 
by  partisan  disputes  and  rivalries.  The 
members  must  owe  loyaltj^  directly  to 
their  Chief,  not  to  party  machines.  But 
in  times  of  National  Crisis  the  Cabinet 
should  be  as  strong  as  possible. 

The  President  could  increase  his  hold 
on  Public  Opinion  if  he  dispensed  with  his 
less  able  Secretaries  and  replaced  them 
by  Republicans  of  more  renowned  abil- 
ity. And  he  could  find  in  the  ranks  of 
the  opposition  men  of  the  required  abil- 
ity, who  were  also  sufficiently  patriotic 
to  forget  their  party  allegiance  when 
they  entered  the  Cabinet.  They  should 
be  called  to  his  council  not  as  representa- 
tives of  the  Republican  Organisation  but 


56  MOBILISING 

as  eminent  Americans.  It  is  not  a  coa- 
lition between  two  hostile  parties  which 
we  need,  but  a  coalescence  of  the  nation. 
The  President  should  choose  his  War 
Cabinet  not  only  on  the  individual  mer- 
its of  the  candidates,  but  with  an  eye  to 
the  confidence  they  will  inspire  in  the  na- 
tion. Take  Mr.  Daniels  as  one  example. 
His  fitness  as  Chief  of  the  Navy  is  seri- 
ously questioned.  Much  of  the  criticism 
is  so  bitter  that  it  is  obviously  unjust. 
But  what  the  people  think  of  him  is  as 
important  as  what  he  has  done.  And, 
although  it  is  quite  possible  that  the 
attacks  on  him  have  been  unfounded, 
public  confidence  in  him  has  been  un- 
dermined. A  king,  convinced  of  the  abil- 
ity of  one  of  his  ministers,  could  afford 
to  maintain  him  in  office  in  defiance  of 
popular  sentiment.  A  president  cannot. 
A  man  like  Hoover  might  do  no  better  as 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  than  Daniels,  but 
the  change  would  fortify  Public  Opinion. 
This  must  be  the  criterion  which  guides 
any   democratic  statesman  in  such  cir- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  57 

cumstances.  Personal  or  partisan  loy- 
alties are  out  of  place.  We  want  the 
President  surrounded  by  men  we  know 
and  trust.  We  would  be  comforted  to 
see  Goethals  as  Secretary  of  War,  not 
that  we  have  anything  against  Baker, 
but  because  we  know  Goethals  better. 

However,  no  such  broadening  of  the 
Cabinet  is  possible  until  a  dependable  ma- 
jority in  Congress  is  assured.  The  Ad- 
ministration, at  present,  has  only  one 
reliance  in  putting  through  its  legislative 
programme  —  the  regular  party  Ma- 
chine. Whether  we  like  it  or  not,  it  is 
the  only  means  at  the  disposal  of  the 
President.  And  he  cannot  risk  weaken- 
ing the  Organisation  of  his  Party,  by 
dropping  "  favorite  sons  "  from  his  Cab- 
inet, until  a  sound,  non-partisan  Na- 
tional majority  is  assured  in  Congress. 

This,  in  outline,  is  the  political  prob- 
lem which  we  must  solve.  In  the  face  of 
an  unparalleled  national  crisis  we  are 
threatened  by  a  paralysing  deadlock  be- 
tween the  Executive  and  the  Legislative 


58  MOBILISING 

Branches.  We  can  not  take  time  to 
work  out  permanent  constitutional  re- 
forms. We  have  need  of  a  temporary, 
extra-legal  expedient  to  meet  the  emer- 
gency. For  we  cannot  expect  unity  in 
Public  Opinion  if  the  Government  is  di- 
vided. 

The  mobilisation  of  governmental  ma- 
chinery on  a  War  basis  once  attended  to, 
we  can  go  on  with  the  work  of  unif}-- 
ing  the  National  Mind.  In  this  the 
French  had  two  great  advantages  which 
came  from  the  extreme  centralisation  of 
their  administrative  system.  Differ- 
ences in  our  national  organisation  make 
it  impossible  to  borrow  these  French 
methods  directly,  but  their  example  is 
suggestive  of  things  we  must  do. 

The  school  mistresses  have  played  a 
notable  part  in  developing  the  superb 
unanimity  of  the  French  people.  Most 
of  the  men  in  the  school  system  have  been 
called  to  the  colors,  but  the  school-marm 
stays  at  her  post.     And  in  the  remote 


PUBLIC  OPINION  59 

villages  of  France,  where  the  great  met- 
ropolitan newspapers  do  not  penetrate, 
the  school-house  is  always  the  intellec- 
tual centre  of  the  community. 

The  Premier  addresses  the  Cliavibre 
des  Deuptes  on  some  matter  of  national 
importance.  The  Minister  of  Public  In- 
struction makes  a  resume  of  it,  with  am- 
ple explanatory  notes,  and  sends  it  out 
as  a  "  general  order "  to  his  subordi- 
nates. A  few  daj's  later  every  school 
mistress  in  France  reads  it  to  her  pupils. 
In  the  evening  the  principal  men  of  the 
village  talk  it  over  with  her  and  they  all 
go  home  that  night  —  the  peasants  from 
Brittany  to  Mentone  —  thinking  of  the 
same  problem  from  the  same  point  of 
view. 

IMonsieur  Ribot,  the  white-haired  wiz- 
ard of  finance,  decides  to  issue  a  new 
loan.  He  wants  all  the  thrifty,  good 
people  of  France  to  empty  their  stock- 
ings, their  little  hoards  of  gold,  into  the 
treasury  of  La  Patrie,  He  calls  on  his 
colleague  of  Public  Instruction  and  be- 


60  MOBILISING 

tween  them  tliey  compose  an  explanatory 
"  general  order  "  to  the  school  teachers 
of  France.  So  when  the  placards  are 
put  up,  advertising  the  new  loan,  there  is 
always  at  least  one  person  in  even  the 
tiniest  village  who  can  explain  each 
clause  of  the  law. 

It  is  a  steady,  quiet,  unobtrusive  influ- 
ence —  but  vastly  significant.  When 
the  history  of  the  war  is  written  the 
school  mistresses  of  France  will  deserve 
great  credit.  They  have  done  "  their 
bit "  by  explaining  to  the  people  the 
events  of  the  war,  stimulating  their  pa- 
triotism, unifying  their  thinking  and 
keeping  them  from  discouragement  when 
the  news  is  bad. 

The  National  Ownership  of  the  Tele- 
graph has  also  given  the  French  Govern- 
ment a  tool  which  they  have  been  quick 
to  use.  Twice  a  day  the  General  Staff 
issues  a  statement  on  the  militar}^  situa- 
tion. The  midnight  bulletin  is  not  so  im- 
portant as  the  afternoon  "  communique 
de   trois   heures.**     There   is    something 


PUBLIC  OPINION  61 

hypnotic  in  its  monotonous  regularity. 
Every  day,  for  more  than  two  years, 
everybody  in  France,  man,  woman  and 
child,  has  grown  tense  together,  waiting 
for  the  three  o'clock  bulletin.  It  is  stu- 
pendous —  the  whole  nation  thinking  to- 
gether once  every  da3\ 

All  morning  long  people  attend  to  and 
think  of  their  personal  affairs.  But 
after  lunch  La  Fraiice  —  the  nation  — 
begins  to  come  into  being.  You  can 
see  the  tension  grow.  By  two  o'clock 
every  one  is  thinking  up  plausible  excuses 
to  be  out  on  the  street  in  front  of  the 
post  office  when  the  communique  is  re- 
ceived. 

It  is  not  good  form  now  in  France  to 
show  emotion.  Republican  stoicism  is 
in  order.  And  so  at  this  fateful  hour 
the  people  appear  indifferent.  But  each 
mind  is  questioning :  "  Will  the  news 
to-day  be  good  or  bad.''  "  All  are  mak- 
ing the  dail}^  resolve  to  meet  the  news  as 
brave  citizens  —  not  to  lose  their  heads 
in  extravagant  optimism  over  successes, 


62  MOBILISING 

not  to  show  distress  if  the  bulletin  is 
"  grave.'''' 

I  was  travelling  in  France  last  spring 
when  the  Crown  Prince  was  pounding  at 
Verdun,  and  I  have  never  seen  anything 
more  inspiring  than  the  way  the  people 
of  the  South,  of  Lyons,  of  Paris,  took 
the  daily  communique  de  trots  heures. 
It  was  terrible  at  first  when  the  news  was 
regularly  bad.  But  France  was  marvel- 
lous under  the  blows.  Never  was  any  na- 
tion more  united  in  the  face  of  the  enemy. 
The  regular  rhythm  of  thinking  together 
once  a  daj^,  in  fair  days  and  foul,  has 
had  a  stupendous,  an  incalculable  effect. 

So  we  must  do  over  here.  By  every 
means  at  its  disposal  our  Government 
must  strive  to  get  us  thinking  together. 
For  unless  that  is  accomplished,  there  is 
nothing  but  endless  muddle  before  us,  a 
welter  of  blunders,  inefficiency  and  dis- 
grace. We  —  the  people  of  the  LTnited 
States  —  are  the  force  back  of  the 
Government.     Unless   our  Will  to  Win 


PUBLIC  OPINION  63 

is  passionate  and  determined,  our  Army 
and  Navy  will  accomplish  little. 

Forain,  the  great  cartoonist,  drew  a 
picture  early  in  1915  which  has  been 
worth  a  couple  of  Army  Corps  to 
France. 

It  represented  two  poilus  in  the  rain 
and  mud  of  that  first  winter  in  the 
trenches.  They  are  discussing  the  pros- 
pects of  the  war. 

"  We'll  win,"  one  of  them  says,  "  pro- 
vided they  stand  firm." 

"They.P"  his  comrade  asks.  "Who 
do  you  mean.^  " 

"  The  civiHans." 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    MOBILISATION    OF    INDUSTRY 

IT  is  in  money  and  munitions  that  we 
can  most  promptly  help  our  com- 
rades already  in  arms.  And  the  amount 
of  aid  we  can  give  them  is  limited  only 
by  the  strength  of  our  national  desire. 
If  we  are  in  earnest  about  it  we  can  do 
a  great  deal. 

One  thing  is  certain.  However  long 
the  war  lasts,  whether  our  Army  is  to  be 
large  or  small,  the  Government  will  have 
to  do  a  great  deal  of  buying.  And  even 
if  our  only  contribution  to  our  friends  in 
Europe  should  be  food,  we  ought  to  have 
a  Government  Purchasing  Bureau  to 
protect  them  from  speculators  here.  We 
have  much  to  learn  from  Europe  in  mili- 
tary matters,  but  in  meeting  such  prob- 
lems as  this  we  are  prepared. 
6i 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       65 

Goethals  of  Panama  or  Hoover  of 
Belgium  at  the  head  of  the  Purcliasing 
Bureau  would  at  once  remove  all  sus- 
picion of  slackness,  inefficiency  or  graft. 
Such  men  are  a  national  asset  of  which 
we  must  make  use.  Names  like  theirs 
are  symbols  of  the  kind  of  decent, 
energetic,  efficient  action  which  would 
make  the  war  popular.  And  we  have 
more  reason  to  fear  graft  than  German 
spies.  It  will  take  only  a  very  little 
"  embalmed  beef "  to  take  all  the  snap 
out  of  us. 


The  methods  by  which  we  can  most  ef- 
fectively put  our  immense  financial  re- 
serves at  work  for  the  defeat  of  Ger- 
many must  be  planned  by  experts. 

Our  laws  are  notoriously  backward  in 
governmental  control  of  finance.  But 
the  savings  of  the  people  are  as  much  a 
part  of  our  national  resources  as  our 
man-power.  We  can  no  more  permit  a 
banker  to  use  the  money  which  we  have 


66  MOBILISING 

intrusted  to  him  in  unpatriotic  specula- 
tions, than  we  could  allow  a  general  to 
lend  one  of  our  regiments  to  the  enem3\ 
The  vast  sum  of  our  savings  in  banks,  in- 
surance and  trust  companies  is  a  force 
which  should  be  immediately  available  as 
a  national  weapon. 

Once  more,  this  is  no  time  to  argue  out 
far-reaching,  permanent  reforms  in  our 
fiscal  system.  We  need  an  emergency 
measure,  which  —  for  the  duration  of  the 
emergency  —  will  put  our  financial  re- 
serves at  the  disposal  of  the  Government. 
We  do  not  want  acrimonious  discus- 
sions of  the  best  way  to  raise  the  budget 
in  normal  times.  We  do  not  want  be- 
fogging debates  on  the  relative  sound- 
ness of  Bond  Issues  and  Direct  Taxation. 
We  want  quick  results.  Europe  has  been 
a  laboratory  of  experiment  in  War  Fi- 
nance, and  our  Treasury  experts  ought 
to  know  which  method  has  proved  the 
best.  Most  of  us  have  small  knowledge 
of  finance,  but  loans  —  Bond  Issues  — 
seem  to  mean  a  larger  profit  to  the  mid- 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS      67 

dleman  banker,  which  is  of  course  an  ar- 
gument against  that  method.  Still  if  the 
lessons  of  the  European  War  have  con- 
vinced our  government  experts  that  Bond 
Issues  are  the  quickest  and  most  effective 
means  of  mobilising  finance,  few  of  us  will 
feel  inclined  to  argue.  The  results,  more 
than  the  methods,  are  of  importance  in 
an  emergency. 

The  one  thing  for  us,  who  are  laymen, 
to  insist  upon  is  that  our  bankers  shall 
no  longer  coin  excessive  profits  out  of 
the  needs  of  our  friends. 


When  we  leave  the  icy  heights  of 
finance  and  come  down  to  "  the  business 
proposition  "  of  intensifying  the  output 
of  munitions,  we  face  a  problem  more 
comprehensible  to  most  of  us.  It  was 
however  the  gravest  and  most  trouble- 
some problem  with  which  the  democracies 
of  Europe  had  to  deal. 

In  1914  no  one  knew  what  was  the  best 
ratio  between  munition  makers  and  sol- 


68  MOBILISING 

diers.  No  one  could  foresee  what  was 
going  to  be  needed.  Few  knew  where  the 
raw  material  came  from.  Worst  of  all 
no  one  was  sure  how  long  the  war  would 
last.  Every  one  under-estimated  its 
duration.  So  neither  France  nor  Brit- 
ain had  a  coherent  plan  of  munition  pro- 
duction to  start  with.  Inevitably  every- 
thing at  first  was  chaotic,  makeshift, 
inefficient. 

Britain  went  through  three  stages  in 
the  effort  to  intensify  output  —  first,  an 
appeal  to  private  initiative;  second,  re- 
luctant State  Aid ;  and  third,  a  thor- 
oughgoing Government  control.  In  the 
last  stage  the  increase  in  production  has 
been  phenomenal. 

The  munitions  which  we  have  furnished 
to  the  Entente  so  far  have  come  solely 
from  private  initiative.  We  have  barely 
scratched  the  surface  of  our  resources. 
If  the  Government  sets  its  shoulder  to 
the  wheel  the  increase  of  output  will  be 
immense.  We  have  had  more  than  two 
years  to  watch  our  sister  democracies  of 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       69 

Europe  struggle  with  tins  problem  —  and 
solve  it.  We  have  had  ample  time  —  and 
it  is  to  be  hoped,  also  the  intelligence  — 
to  profit  by  their  experience. 


There  are  in  particular  two  dangers 
to  be  avoided. 

I.  In  the  first  days  of  the  war  there 
was  a  natural  and  comprehensible  tend- 
ency to  put  every  energy  into  the  Army 
and  to  let  industry  take  care  of  itself. 
France  blundered  into  this  error  more 
deeply  and  suffered  more  from  it  than 
Britain.  At  the  call  to  arms  she  put  too 
many  men  into  uniform  and  let  her  fac- 
tories close  down.  The  immediate  inva- 
sion of  her  coal  and  iron  districts  in  the 
North  was  a  great  blow,  but  her  mu- 
nition industry  was  even  more  hampered 
by  lack  of  men.  In  spite  of  the  patriotic 
response  of  the  women  of  France,  who 
not  only  brought  in  the  harvests  to  feed 
the  nation  but  also  in  great  numbers 
entered  the  factories,  the  Army  was  soon 


70  MOBILISING 

short  of  munitions.  It  w.-is  only  slowly 
and  with  hesitancy  that  the  Government 
recovered  from  the  Short  War  Fallacy 
and  began  sending  men  back  from  the 
front  to  work  the  machines  of  industry. 

Britain  —  from  the  same  reason  — 
made  the  same  blunder.  It  was  lightly 
assumed  that  the  best  way  to  serve  your 
country  was  to  die  for  it.  No  serious 
discrimination  w^as  made  in  the  early  re- 
cruiting. Thousands  and  thousands  of 
men  who  were  very  much  more  valuable  in 
the  mines,  the  iron  mills  and  in  agricul- 
ture went  into  the  training  camps. 

II.  The  opposite  error,  "  Business  as 
usual  " —  also  a  result  of  the  Short  War 
Fallacy  —  was  an  even  more  serious 
check  to  speedy  and  complete  mobilisa- 
tion of  industry.  And  into  this  mistake 
Britain  stumbled  more  deeply  than 
France. 

The  old  Manchester  School  of  Political 
Economy  —  the  laissez-faire,  trust-to- 
luck  philosophy  —  still  dominated  the 
thinking  of  the  English  Liberals.     The 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       71 

Government  wanted  to  interfere  with  the 
processes  of  industry  as  little  as  possible. 
Production,  they  held,  is  based  on  the 
lure  of  profits.  They  were  entirely  un- 
prepared to  realise  that  people  will  work 
harder  out  of  patriotism  than  they  will 
for  an  increase  of  income. 

So  at  first  Britain  tried  to  meet  an  ex- 
traordinary emergency  by  ordinary 
means.  "  Private  initiative  "  was  tried 
and  miserably  fell  down  on  the  job. 
The  Government  then  took  hesitating 
steps  in  the  direction  of  State  Aid: 
grants  of  capital,  subsidies,  bonuses. 
But  these  measures  —  in  the  immoderate 
need  —  brought  only  moderate  returns. 
And  so,  as  they  could  not  get  results  by 
appeal  to  the  commercial  instinct,  they 
were  forced  at  last  to  go  the  limit  in 
direct  government  control  and  operation 
of  the  war  industries. 

In  France  the  difficulty  on  this  score 
arose  principally  over  the  lack  of  a  clear 
definition  of  "  munitions."  Every  one 
was  ready  to  admit  that  shells  are  ammu- 


72  MOBILISING 

nition  and  that  their  manufacture  should 
at  once  be  dh-ected  and  controlled  by  the 
Government.  But  is  red  ulne,  which  les 
poilus  call  "  pintardy''  a  munition?  And 
how  about  the  silk  used  for  balloon  en- 
velopes ?  "  Munitions  "  are  as  hard  to 
define  as  "  contraband."  Of  course  the 
only  workable  definition  is:  all  things 
needed  by  the  Government  for  the  con- 
duct of  the  war.  It  is  not  the  nature  of 
the  product  which  is  important,  but  who 
needs  it. 

The  French  suffered  considerably  from 
lack  of  such  a  definition.  It  was  in  these 
subsidiary  industries  that  the  propeurs 
piled  up  excessive  fortunes  and  that  the 
worst  labor  conflicts  occurred. 


The  greatest  element  in  mobilising  in- 
dustry is  Labor.  Nothing  much  can  be 
done  without  the  hearty  co-operation  of 
the  wage-workers  and  of  their  organisa- 
tions. Here  again  the  struggles  of  the 
European  democracies  with  this  problem 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       73 

which  now  faces  us  is  full  of  lessons  — 
lessons  both  of  encouragement  and  of 
warning. 

Imperial  Germany  has  not  —  presum- 
ably has  not  dared  to  —  put  as  much 
strain  on  her  laborers  as  France  and 
Britain.  At  the  first  sign  of  food  short- 
age, the  Kaiser's  government  put  the 
nation  on  rations  which  bore  more  heavily 
on  the  well-to-do  than  on  the  poor.  The 
sj^stem  of  bread  and  meat  tickets  has  not 
greatly  reduced  the  diet  of  the  wage- 
earners.  The  German  statesmen  have 
nursed  the  proletariat.  Even  Prussia 
has  promised  them  some  measure  of  dem- 
ocratic power  after  the  war.  An  intelli- 
gent and  largely  successful  effort  has 
been  made  not  to  give  the  workers  any 
specific  grievances. 

The  democratic  governments  were  not 
so  foresighted.  They  were  slow  to  es- 
tablish measures  to  safeguard  the  inter- 
ests of  Labor.  It  was  only  under  the 
pressure  of  circumstances  that  they  gave 
attention  to  this  problem. 


74<  MOBILISING 

Both  in  France  and  Britain  the  or- 
ganised workers  responded  immediately 
and  wholeheartedly  to  the  Call  to  Arms. 
Many  were  surprised  at  this.  In  France 
the  extreme  revolutionary  syndicalism  of 
the  General  Confederation  of  Labor  had 
been  intensely  anti-militarist  and  to  a 
large  extent  anarchistic  and  anti-patriot. 
But  behind  the  fog  of  diplomatic  corre- 
spondence and  the  veil  of  theory,  the 
workers  of  France  and  Britain  saw  a 
clear-cut  issue  between  democrac}^  and 
military  despotism.  They  believed  that 
the  principles  of  popular  self-government 
were  worth  defending  and  they  rallied  to 
the  Call  with  a  patriotism  not  surpassed 
by  any  class  of  society. 

The  English  Unions  gave  more  than 
their  proportion  to  the  first  wave  of 
volunteers.  On  their  own  initiative  they 
abandoned  all  their  strike  plans.  This 
was  a  very  real  sacrifice  for  them.  The 
cost  of  living  had  been  going  up  in  Eng- 
land in  the  last  decade  and  there  had 
been  no  compensating  raise  in  wages,  so 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       75 

practically  all  the  large  unions  were  pre- 
paring for  simultaneous  strikes  in  the 
fall  of  1914.  They  had  been  at  work 
for  years  mobilising  for  a  bitter  fight. 
The  German  Government,  through  their 
spies,  knew  of  this.  They  were  counting 
on  Industrial  War  in  England.  But  in 
the  face  of  national  danger  the  British 
workers  gave  up  their  ow^n  plans  and 
threw  themselves  into  the  work  of  Na- 
tional Defence. 

Of  almost  equal  importance  to  this  sac- 
rifice of  their  wage  demands,  was  the  ac- 
tion of  the  British  Unions  in  regard  to 
fraudulent  Army  Furnishers.  They 
served  notice  that  they  would  strike  in 
any  shop  which  tried  to  cheat  on  govern- 
ment contracts.  And  the  fact  that  the 
British  Army  has  suffered  less  than  ever 
before  in  its  history  from  paper-soled 
shoes,  shoddy  clothing,  and  wooden  bul- 
lets is  very  largely  due  to  the  patriotism 
of  Organised  Labor. 

But  this  first  spontaneous  outburst  of 
patriotism  —  this     immensely     valuable 


76  MOBILISING 

asset  —  was  soon  dampened.  To  a  less 
extent  in  France,  to  a  much  greater  ex- 
tent in  England,  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
working  class  was  cooled  hy  official  stu- 
pidity —  sometimes  stupidity  of  act, 
but  more  often  of  inaction. 

The  development  of  the  situation  in  the 
coal  fields  of  South  Wales  is  broadly  typ- 
ical. There  had  been  a  good  deal  of  anti- 
militarist  agitation  among  the  men.  In 
the  week  before  hostilities  broke  out,  they 
had  voted  to  strike  in  case  of  war.  They 
expected  a  like  action  from  the  coal  min- 
ers of  Germany.  Modern  war  they 
argued  would  be  impossible  without  coal, 
so  if  all  the  miners  of  the  world  acted 
together  the  great  tragedy  could  be  pre- 
vented. But  Organised  Labor  in  Ger- 
many did  not  respond.  (There  also  the 
workers  were  more  loyal  to  their  govern- 
ment than  to  their  class.)  And  the  first 
news  of  the  invasion  of  Belgium  put  an 
end  to  all  anti-military  propaganda  in 
Wales.  The  miners  proved  themselves 
more  patriotic  than  the  rest  of  England 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       77 

—  furnishing  considerably  more  volun- 
teers than  their  due  proportion. 

Once  war  began  there  was  no  thought 
of  a  strike  in  the  coal  fields.  The  men 
who  had  not  volunteered  were  working 
overtime  to  make  up  for  those  who  had 
gone  and  to  increase  the  gross  output. 
But  all  this  the  Government  accepted 
from  them  as  a  matter  of  course.  It 
took  no  care  to  protect  them  from  less 
patriotic  people  who  were  taking  advan- 
tage of  their  sacrifices. 

Very  soon  discontent  —  inevitable, 
justifiable  discontent  —  arose.  For  the 
coal-owners  were  not  exhibiting  any  self- 
denying  patriotism.  They  were  charg- 
ing top  prices  —  all  the  traffic  would 
bear  —  to  the  Navy,  the  Merchant  Fleet 
and  the  Munition  Factories.  They  were 
also  holding  up  the  Allies.  The  profits 
of  the  coal  owners  and  their  close  allies, 
the  shipping  interests,  soared.  And  the 
Government,  committed  to  the  Business- 
as-usual  theory,  did  nothing  to  stop  this 
abuse  till  the  complaints  from  France  and 


78  MOBILISING 

Italy,  where  people  were  freezing  and 
where  the  manufacture  of  munitions  was 
being  throttled,  became  too  strident  to 
be  ignored. 

The  miners  knew  that  their  extra  ef- 
forts were  benefitting  the  Cause  of  De- 
mocracy very  little,  but  were  swelling  the 
fortunes  of  their  bosses  extravagantly. 
And  the  Government  did  nothing  to  pro- 
tect them  from  the  piracy  of  the  food 
speculators.  While  their  wages,  inade- 
quate before  the  war,  had  not  been  in- 
creased, the  price  of  their  food  had  gone 
up  forty  per  cent. 

But  the  worst  of  it  was  that  when  the 
public  outcry  for  cheaper  coal  and  a 
greater  output  became  insistent,  the  Coal 
Barons  replied  that  they  could  do  noth- 
ing unless  the  Unions  were  smashed. 
They  proposed  some  laws,  compulsory 
arbitration,  forced  labor,  etc.,  which 
seemed  to  the  workers  cold-blooded  as- 
saults on  their  liberties. 

And  then  the  first  strike  broke  out. 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       79 

The  Government,  in  the  person  of  Mr. 
Lloyd  George,  came  down  to  Wales  to 
mediate.  His  intervention  gives  us  a 
very  human  picture  of  a  perplexed  states- 
man, immensely  preoccupied  with  other 
and  to  him  more  important  problems,  ob- 
sessed by  the  Short  War  Fallacy  —  a  fal- 
lacy shared  by  his  colleagues  in  office, 
shared  by  almost  every  one.  His  domi- 
nant idea  was  to  postpone  all  lesser  is- 
sues in  the  face  of  the  great  national 
crisis.  As  he  has  dealt  ^vith  the  Irish 
Question,  so  he  dealt  with  the  Welsh 
miners. 

We  do  not  know  what  he  said  to  the 
bosses  —  that  was  a  private  conference. 
But  he  spoke  to  the  men  in  a  public  meet- 
ing. He  had  no  coherent  remedy  for 
their  complaints.  He  had  not  had  time 
to  think  the  problem  out.  He  did  not  be- 
lieve there  was  time  to  solve  it.  The 
midst  of  a  Great  War  was  not  an  ideal 
occasion  for  an  attempt  to  settle  the  age- 
old  dispute  between  the  "  haves  "  and  the 


80  MOBILISING 

"  have-nots."  His  one  object  was  to  get 
the  men  back  to  work  and  postpone  the 
settlement. 

Lloyd  George  is  a  past  master  of  pop- 
ular oratory.  And  all  his  repertoire  is 
in  that  speech* —  half-sobbing  emotional 
pathos,  cajolery  and  good  jokes,  prom- 
ises and  threats.  But  the  keynote  of  it 
all  was  an  appeal  to  their  loyalty. 
"  Don't  go  back  on  the  boys  at  the 
front." 

The  men,  unconvinced  by  his  promises 
but  moved  by  his  appeal,  went  back 
to  their  underground  jobs.  And  we  may 
imagine  Mv.  Lloyd  George  heaving  a 
great  sigh  of  relief,  taking  the  midnight 
train  back  to  the  Parliament  at  West- 
minster, brushing  aside  those  who  wanted 
to  waste  time  congratulating  him  over 
his  success  in  Wales,  and  throwing  his 
tireless  energy  into  the  soul-consuming 
work  of  infusing  activity  into  the  nation. 

And  we  cannot  be  very  much  surprised 
that,  in  the  rush  of  other  work,  he  forgot 
his  promises  to  the  Welsh  Miners  —  till 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       81 

they  reminded  him  of  their  intolerable 
conditions  by  new  strikes. 

With  slight  differences  of  detail  this  is 
the  story  of  every  industrial  dispute 
which  has  arisen  in  France  or  England  to 
impede  the  conduct  of  the  War.  Every- 
where Organised  Labor  was  patriotic  — 
leanted  to  be  patriotic  —  and  came  more 
than  half-way  to  meet  the  Government 
in  the  defence  of  democratic  institutions. 
It  cheerfully  assumed  more  than  its  due 
share  of  the  common  burden.  But  where 
Labor  was  rebuffed,  it  grew  sullen.  If 
the  workers  were  not  protected  from  less 
patriotic  exploiters,  they  tried  to  pro- 
tect themselves  by  the  only  weapon  they 
knew. 

The  Organised  Working-men  are  pecu- 
liarly sensitive  to  Public  Opinion.  They 
have  not  the  type  of  mind  of  those  fili- 
bustering Senators  who  stood  out  alone 
against  the  manifest  will  of  their  asso- 
ciates. If  the  Unions  are  convinced  that 
their  interests  are  being  protected,  that 
the  war  is  not  being  conducted  against 


82  MOBILISING 

them,  they  will  at  once  discountenance 
any  unjustified  strike  in  a  time  of  crisis. 

This  was  illustrated  when  a  group  of 
mechanics  on  the  Panama  Canal  job 
tried  to  hold  up  the  Commission  for  wages 
far  in  excess  of  those  gained  by  their 
mates  at  home.  They  had  no  reason  for 
striking,  except  that  they  thought  they 
had  the  Government  in  a  hole.  But  their 
own  National  Organisation  at  home  at 
once  denounced  them  and  offered  to  re- 
place them  if  they  quit  work. 

The  coal  strikes  in  Wales  would  not 
have  been  possible  if  an  overwhelming 
proportion  of  the  Trade  Unionists  in 
other  industries  had  not  considered  them 
justified.  If  the  Government  had  had  a 
strong  case  against  the  Welsh  miners, 
the  other  working-men  would  not  have 
countenanced  the  strike.  But  by  failing 
to  protect  labor  from  unpatriotic  ex- 
ploitation the  Government  had  weakened 
its  case  hopelessly. 

The  wage  earning  class  is  the  largest 
and   itiost    devotedly    liberal   element    in 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       83 

any  modern  nation.  No  democratic  war 
is  possible  without  their  wholehearted 
support.  And  the  question  of  assuring 
their  cordial  co-operation  —  obviously  a 
matter  of  vital  importance  —  will  not 
solve  itself.  It  demands  immediate  at- 
tention. It  cannot  be  evaded.  It  must 
be  faced. 

The  problem  will  be  the  same  in 
America.  The  men  will  be  patriotic,  for 
they  hate  the  autocratic  principle. 
They  will  support  our  government 
against  autocrats  abroad,  in  so  far  as 
they  are  convinced  that  it  is  not  con- 
trolled by  our  home-grown  autocrats. 

But  every  one  who  reads  our  newspa- 
pers knows  that  many  big  employers  of 
labor  openly  advocate  universal  mili- 
tary service  as  a  good  means  of  smash- 
ing the  Unions.  Some  have  written  in 
the  public  press  favoring  a  war  with 
German}^  —  a  war  with  an}^  one  —  on 
the  theory  of  Napoleon,  the  Less,  that: 
"  Foreign  adventures  distract  attention 
from  discontent  at  home."     And  just  as 


84  MOBILISING 

the  French  Republicans  knew  that  the 
Royalists  and  Clericalists  would  grasp  at 
w^ar  as  a  pretext  to  regain  power,  so 
our  working-men  know  that  anti-labor 
forces  will  try  to  use  this  crisis  to  at- 
tack them. 

This  is  not  a  question  of  whether  one 
approves  or  disapproves  of  the  Organ- 
isation of  Labor.  It  is  a  lesson  of  cold 
fact.  A  democracy  cannot  carry  on  an 
effective  war  without  the  sincere  co- 
operation of  the  working  class.  And 
the  Unions  will  not  support  a  war  which 
is  directed  against  themselves.  They 
cannot  be  expected  to  consider  that  pa- 
tient submission  to  overwork  and  under- 
pay for  the  greater  glory  and  profit  of 
the  bosses  is  a  patriotic  duty. 

Imperial  Germany  was  astute  enough 
to  foresee  the  danger  of  any  justified  dis- 
content among  its  workers.  France  saw 
it  quickly.  Britain,  less  quickly.  But 
in  the  end,  after  many  bitter  and  anxious 
moments,  Britain  had  to  face  and  solve 
the  problem.     Arc  we  adroit  enough  to 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       85 

profit  by  these  lessons  or  must  we  learn 
them  for  ourselves  by  months  of  muddle, 
painful  paralysing  strikes  and  industrial 
war? 


One  point  to  which  I  have  frequently 
referred  and  which  deserves  emphasis  in 
this  connection  is  the  advisability  of  mak- 
ing it  clear  that  War  Measures  are 
temporary. 

Throughout  the  first  two  years  of  war, 
when  Britain  was  evolving  a  solution  to 
the  munition  problem,  the  issue  was  con- 
tinually befogged  by  the  ingrained  Brit- 
ish reverence  for  precedents  —  respect 
for  those  already  established  and  fear  of 
establishing  unsound  rules  for  the  future. 

It  was  only  slowly  that  the  nation 
came  to  realise  that  the  crisis  was  un- 
precedented, that  methods  were  demanded 
which  had  no  relation  to  the  needs  of 
normal  times.  The  process  of  intensify- 
ing munition  production  would  have  been 
immensely  speeded  up,  if  British  states- 


86  MOBILISING 

manship  liad  produced  a  formula  of 
emergency.  A  clear  statement  that  war 
measures  were  temporary,  and  not  to  be 
used  as  precedents  for  the  future,  would 
have  greatly  eased  the  situation. 

One  thing  which  seems  a  strange  para- 
dox is  that  the  same  Coal  Barons  who 
fought  doggedly  against  any  concessions 
to  their  men,  submitted  without  a  quiver 
to  direct  war  taxes  —  taxes  on  profits, 
taxes  on  income  —  of  unprecedented 
rigor.  Some  of  them  are  paying  a  quar- 
ter in  the  dollar  in  income  tax  and  the 
other  taxes  besides.  They  submitted  to 
these  drastic  taxes  for  the  very  reason 
that  being  so  drastic,  they  could  not  be 
permanent. 

But  in  facing  the  industrial  problem, 
Lloyd  George  never  found  the  happy 
formula  to  free  his  proposed  concessions 
from  the  suspicion  of  permanency. 

There  had  been  so  much  talk  of  Gov- 
ernment Ownership  of  the  coal  mines  in 
the  pre-war  days  that  the  owners  were  on 
their  guard.     They  preferred  to  have  the 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS      8T 

tax-gatherer  take  a  quarter  of  their  cash 
to  having  any  suspicion  cast  on  the 
validity  of  their  title  to  the  source  of  their 
wealth.  Even  if  Government  operation 
be  the  wiser  permanent  polic}^,  it  is  ob- 
viously tactless  to  raise  the  question  un- 
necessarily at  a  moment  when  you  want 
the  wholehearted  co-operation  of  the  ac- 
tual owner. 

The  same  psychological  snag  was  re- 
peatedly run  against  when  dealing  with 
Labor.  Men  who  had  been  earning 
eight  shillings  a  day  gladly  volunteered 
at  a  shilling  a  day  —  for  the  duration  of 
the  war.  The  same  men  at  home  fought 
stubbornly  against  reduction  to  seven 
shillings  and  six.  They  were  ready  to 
accept  an}^  temporary  sacrifice  demanded 
by  the  emergency,  but  they  resisted  bit- 
terl}^  any  lowering  of  their  Union  stand- 
ards, any  concession  at  all,  which  seemed 
a  permanent  surrender. 

So,  whenever  our  Government  appeals 
to  either  Capital  or  Labor  for  sacri- 
fices in  behalf  of  the  war,  it  is  of  pri- 


88  MOBILISING 

mary  importance  to  make  it  clear  that 
the  concession  asked  for  is  a  temporary 
emergency  measure. 

The  experience  of  France  and  Britain 
indicate  a  solution  of  this  nature: 

The  War  Government  should  clearly 
state  that  it  is  not  trying  to  solve  the 
Industrial  Problem,  that  the  measures  it 
proposes  are  temporary  and  will  not  out- 
live the  emergency,  that  its  one  object 
in  interfering  with  industry  is  the  in- 
tensification of  production. 

The  Munitions  Commission  should  ap- 
portion its  orders  to  existing  plants  (or 
arrange  for  their  erection  if  necessary). 
Any  company  accepting  government  con- 
tracts should  open  its  books.  The  Com- 
mission should  fix  a  price  based  on  ac- 
tual costs  of  production  and  a  moderate 
profit  —  eight  per  cent,  or  whatever 
proves  necessary  to  attract  private  cap- 
ital. And  a  schedule  of  increasing  pro- 
duction up  to  utmost  capacity  should 
be  agreed  upon. 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS      89 

The  contracts  should  read  that  the 
Government  will  not  intervene  so  long  as 
the  output  is  maintained  in  quality  and 
quantity  as  per  specifications  —  but  that 
it  will  at  once  assume  control  of  the  fac- 
tor}^, for  the  duration  of  the  war,  if  pro- 
duction falls  below  the  schedule  agreed 
upon. 

It  would  then  be  up  to  the  Employer 
and  the  Employes  to  arrange  their 
own  difficulties  as  they  saw  fit,  so  long 
as  their  dispute  did  not  slacken  the  out- 
put. 

If  the  boss  felt  that  his  men  were  mak- 
ing excessive  demands  and  that  his 
profits  were  too  low,  he  could  quit  the 
job  and  turn  his  factory  over  to  the 
Government. 

If  the  men  felt  that  the  boss  was  mak- 
ing excessive  profits,  overworking  or  un- 
derpaying them,  they  could  strike  and 
automatically  become  Government  em- 
ployes. 

There  should  be  a  clear  understanding 
on  all  sides  of  exactly  what  would  hap- 


90  MOBILISING 

pen  if  a  cessation  of  work  forced  the 
Government  to  assume  control.  It 
should  mean  to  the  owners  a  rental  of 
six  per  cent,  on  the  physical  value  of 
their  property,  to  the  men  employment 
under  the  Union  conditions  in  vogue  in 
the  Government  Arsenals. 

The  Munition  Commission  should  call 
together  representatives  of  Capital  and 
Labor  and  say  to  them : 

"  Citizens,  we  are  at  war.  And  in 
these  modern  days  it  is  the  volume  of 
munitions  that  wins.  Our  ability  at  or- 
ganising industrial  ventures  is  one  of  our 
great  national  prides.  For  the  moment 
it  is  by  industrial  co-operation  that  we 
can  most  help  our  Comrades  who  are  al- 
ready in  arms. 

"  We  do  not  intend  to  use  this  emer- 
gency of  war  as  a  pretext  to  put  through 
any  collectivist  legislation  and  we  are 
not  going  to  use  this  crisis  as  an  excuse 
for  smashing  organised  labor.  We  are 
not  attempting  to  solve  the  permanent 
problems  which  face  you.     In  your  dis- 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       91 

putcs,  we  Avill  be  —  for  the  duration  of 
the  war  —  strictly  neutral. 

"  The  National  Emergency  is  too  ur- 
gent to  permit  of  consideration  of  the 
Industrial  Problem  in  the  abstract.  We 
are  faced  by  a  concrete  task  —  the  in- 
crease of  output.  We  are  not  inter- 
ested in  anything  else. 

"  To  you,  whose  capital  is  at  stake, 
we  promise  not  to  adopt  any  confisca- 
tory policy.  We  want  you  to  operate 
and  direct  your  factories.  We  intend  to 
pay  you  for  the  use  of  your  property  and 
for  your  administrative  work.  We  will 
give  you  a  price  estimated  on  a  decent 
profit.  As  long  as  you  continue  to  oper- 
ate your  plant  and  intensify  your  pro- 
duction we  will  not  limit  your  earnings. 
If  you  can  improve  your  methods  and 
increase  your  dividends,  we  will  not  ob- 
ject. If  you  can  increase  your  profits 
by  finding  labor  below  the  market  price 
—  well,  that  does  not  sound  wise  to  us  — 
but  we  will  not  intervene  on  that  score. 
If  you  can  afford  to  pay  your  employes 


9^  MOBILISING 

more  than  Union  rates,  so  much  tlie  bet- 
ter. But  we  are  not  directly  interested 
in  profits  or  wages.  Our  concern'  is  onl}^ 
with  output.  To  fall  below  the  standard 
is  industrial  treason. 

"  To  you,  who  contribute  to  industry 
your  strength  and  manual  skill,  we  prom- 
ise adequate  protection.  We  can  not 
possibly  win  this  war  without  your  en- 
thusiastic patriotism.  We  know  you  are 
in  hearty  accord  with  ideals  for  which 
we  are  fighting.  But,  while  we  expect 
your  support,  we  are  also  resolved  to  de- 
serve it.  We  may  have  to  ask  you  to 
waive  some  of  your  Union  rules.  But 
such  sacrifices  as  are  demanded  of  you  we 
stamp  with  our  guaranty,  '  Temporary.' 
They  are  emergency  —  house-afire  — 
measures.  We  pledge  ourselves  to  allow 
no  one  to  take  selfish  advantage  of  such 
sacrifices. 

"We  cannot  at  this  time  plan  an 
ideal  wage,  nor  ideal  shop  conditions. 
We  must  take  the  best  we  can  find  ready 
at   hand.     We  will  maintain   the  labor 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       93 

conditions  as  worked  out  in  Government 
Shops,  of  which  your  Unions  have  ap- 
proved, as  a  minimum  standard.  If  we 
are  unable  to  prevent  an  increase  in  the 
cost  of  living,  the  Government  wage  will 
be  raised  in  compensation.  You  are  fa- 
miliar with  the  standards  in  our  govern- 
ment factories.  Y^ou  are  to  consider 
that  3^ou  have  a  right  to  similar  condi- 
tions. 

"  However,  it  is  not  our  intention  to 
limit  you  to  this  minimum.  Many  em- 
ployers in  private  factories  are  able  to 
give  better  terms.  We  have  no  objec- 
tion to  your  drawing  a  hundred  dollars 
a  minute  if  you  can  find  any  one  to  pay 
it.  Whether  your  wage  is  raised  or  low- 
ered is  not  our  concern.  Do  anything 
you  want  to  better  your  condition  which 
does  not  check  production.  The  books 
are  open  on  Government  jobs,  you  can 
see  for  yourself  how  far  you  can  go. 
But  all  you  can  gain  by  striking  is  Gov- 
ernment operation  and  Government  wages 
' —  and  no  more! 


94j  mobilising 

"  Citizens,  we  have  tried  to  be  fair 
to  both  sides.  We  undertake  to  protect 
each  of  you  from  unpatriotic  or  unjust 
demands  of  the  other.  We  are  subor- 
dinating everything  to  the  needs  of  this 
emergency.  We  would  much  prefer  not 
to  assume  the  burden  of  operating  the 
munition  industry  and  we  hope  you  can 
do  it  for  us.  If  you  fail  us,  we  will  be 
forced  to  take  over  3^our  factories  for  the 
duration  of  the  war.  That  will  mean  six 
per  cent,  for  Capital  and  fair  wages  for 
Labor. 

"  Now  we  appeal  to  you  as  patriots. 
The  time  has  not  come  when  you  are 
needed  at  the  front  to  defend  those  ideals 
which  are  our  common  heritage  and 
treasure.  Your  country  needs,  not  your 
blood,  but  your  skill. 

"  We  have  done  the  best  we  can  for 
you.  Now  —  go  to  it !  Deliver  the 
goods !  " 

Capital,  although  in  Europe  it  has 
been  very  reluctant  to  forego  excessive 


MONEY  AND  MUNITIONS       95 

profits,  could  hardly  object  to  such  a 
patriotic  appeal. 

And  no  one  who  knows  Organised  La- 
bor here,  or  has  watched  it  in  this  war 
emergency  in  Europe,  can  doubt  that  it 
would  respond  wholeheartedly. 

It  would  not  be  necessary  to  conscript 
Labor.  The  Government  has  been  a 
"  good  emplo3^er."  In  times  of  peace 
the  men  have  learned  that.  Very  few  of 
them  would  want  to  strike  on  a  govern- 
ment job  in  a  time  of  crisis.  Any  who 
did  would  be  overwhelmed  by  the  denun- 
ciations of  their  mates. 

Give  them  this  for  a  slogan  —  "A 
fair  wage  and  a  fair  profit  " —  and  they 
will  boost  our  industrial  production  to 
the  sky. 

It  is  not  their  patriotism  which  is  in 
question,  but  their  faith  in  our  good 
faith.  Reassure  them,  convince  them 
that  their  sacrifices  are  appreciated,  and 
the  trouble  with  the  labor  market  will 
not  be  strikes,  but  the  tendency  of  the 


96  MOBILISING 

men  to  sneak  away  from  the  factories  to 
enlist. 

I  chanced  to  visit  one  munition  plant 
in  England.  It  had  been  organised  on 
capital,  most  of  which  had  been  raised 
by  a  free  loan  from  the  Government. 
The  contract  with  the  Munition  Depart- 
ment had  been  arranged  on  an  estimated 
weekly  output  of  3,000  shells  and  the 
price  had  been  based  on  this  figure. 

The  shops  were  placarded  with  post- 
ers urging  the  workers  to  "  do  their 
bit,"  "to  help  the  boys  at  the  front." 
And  by  such  ardent  appeals  to  the  pa- 
triotism of  the  employes  the  output  had 
been  nearly  doubled.  But  no  increase  in 
pay  had  been  granted  the  workers  and  no 
reduction  had  been  made  in  the  price  of 
sale  to  the  Government. 

The  employes  in  this  shop,  many  of 
whom  were  women,  worked  at  tremendous 
speed  for  exceedingly  long  hours.  They 
did  it  "  to  help  the  boys  at  the  front  " 
but  they  soon  realised  —  and  were  sore 
and    bitter    with    the   knowledge  —  that 


MONEY  AND  :\IUNITIONS      9T 

most  of  their  patriotic  effort  was  being 
absorbed  by  the  shockingly  big  profits  of 
the  shareholders. 

I  presume  that  this  case  was  excep- 
tionally flagrant.  I  visited  these  shops 
before  the  Government  became  rigorous 
in  its  effort  to  stop  such  scandals.  But 
there  were  enough  similar  cases  to 
seriously  dampen  the  first  patriotic  ar- 
dor of  the  British  wage-earners.  No 
government  deserves  the  support  of 
Labor  under  such  circumstances. 

The  country  which  can  say  to  its 
workers,  "  This  is  a  war  of  fair  wages 
and  fair  profits "  is  the  kind  of  a 
country  the  workers  will  fight  for. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    MOBILISATION    OF    MEN 

IF  events  should  force  us  to  fight  to  the 
limit  of  our  strength,  we  could  muster 
an  army  of  more  than  ten  million  men. 
Of  course  we  could  not  do  so  at  once  and 
it  is  hard  to  imagine  circumstances  which 
would  demand  so  great  an  effort.  But 
experience  has  shown  that  one-tenth  of 
the  total  population  is  the  standard  of 
complete  mobilisation. 

Canada  went  into  the  War  under  con- 
ditions not  dissimilar  to  ours.  They 
were  not  invaded,  they  were  unprepared, 
and  they  had  like  us  a  large  number  of 
non-assimilated  immigrants.  And  we 
have  to  our  advantage  the  lessons  of 
their  experience  and  a  big  start  in  the 
munition  business.  Yet  in  two  and  a  half 
years  they  have  reached  near  to  half  of 

98 


MEN  99 

complete  mobilisation.  Approximately 
one-twentieth  of  their  population  is  in 
uniform,  at  the  front  or  in  the  training 
camps. 

So,  if  we  do  as  well  as  our  next-door 
neighbor,  we  ought  to  muster  in  the  same 
period  five  million  men  and  have  at  least 
half  of  them  ready  for  active  service. 

Few  well-informed  people  are  sure  that 
the  war  will  be  over  this  summer.  The 
best  judgment  seems  to  consider  a  1918 
campaign  more  than  probable.  So  we 
ought  to  raise  an  Expeditionary  Force 
of  Half  a  Million  —  a  real  army,  ready 
for  service  —  within  a  year  after  the 
Declaration  of  War.  Even  if  luck  fa- 
vors us  and  our  transports  do  not  have 
to  sail,  the  fact  that  we  have  the  men 
readj^  to  embark  will  have  an  influence 
—  perhaps  the  decisive  influence  —  on 
determining  whether  1918  shall  be  as 
blood-soaked  as  1917  promises  to  be. 
And  so  if  we  are  to  exercise  that  influ- 
ence on  Germany  next  year  we  must  begin 
organising  our  military  force  at  once. 


100  MOBILISING 

We  do  not  want  to  repeat  the  blunder 
of  falling  into  the  Short  War  Fallacy. 
Whether  we  are  going  to  need  half  a  mil- 
lion men  or  ten  million  —  a  matter  no 
one  can  predetermine  —  the  preliminary 
w^ork  will  be  much  the  same.  If  we  start 
out  to  raise  an  Army  of  Half  a  Million, 
it  will  take  very  little  extra  effort  to  pre- 
pare to  double  or  quadruple  it,  if  the  need 
arises. 

It  is  always  easy  to  demobilise.  But 
time  once  lost  is  never  found  again. 

If  the  nation  is  grimly  and  passion- 
ately resolved  to  enforce  its  will,  if  the 
finances  and  industry  of  the  country  are 
efficiently  mobilised,  the  raising  and 
training  of  men  is  merely  a  matter  of 
that  sort  of  detail  organisation  at  which 
we  have  always  been  expert.  There  is 
nothing  mystic  nor  esoteric  about  mili- 
tary organisation. 

First  of  all  we  must  kill  the  "  Business 
as  usual "  frame  of  mind.  We  must 
realise  that  it  is  not  natural  to  be  at 
war,   that   an   upheaval  —  like   the   San 


MEN  101 

Francisco  Earthquake  or  the  Galveston 
Tidal  Wave  —  has  ovenvhelmed  our  nor- 
mal life,  and  that  we  must  all  turn  out 
to  build  emergency  shelters  for  what  we 
hold  dear.  We  must  be  willing  to  post- 
pone usual  business  till  the  return  of 
Peace.  The  speed  and  effectiveness  with 
which  we  develop  military  power  will  de- 
pend entirely  on  how  keenly  we  are  de- 
termined to  have  it. 


It  is  on  the  sea  that  our  forces  will 
first  come  into  contact  with  the  enemy. 
So  the  Navy  must  have  the  right  of  way 
in  recruiting.  We  must  give  them  all 
the  men  they  need.  The  general  public 
can  have  very  little  to  say  about  Naval 
Strategy,  for  the  Censorship  abroad  has 
been  so  strict  in  regard  to  Admiralty  op- 
erations that  the  lessons  of  this  two  and 
a  half  years  of  sea  war  are  not  available 
for  the  layman.  We  must  trust  that  our 
Admirals  will  be  well  advised  by  our  Al- 
lies. 


102  MOBILISING 

The  Navy  must  also  liave  the  first  call 
on  our  industrial  resources.  The  ships 
which  they  need  must  be  laid  down  at 
once  and  pushed  to  speedy  completion. 
And  in  their  building  programme  there 
must  be  plans  for  an  adequate  transport 
system  for  the  Army  when  it  is  ready. 


One  branch  of  our  Military  strength 
is  already  fully  trained  and  can  be 
quickly  mobilised.  In  our  Corps  of 
Army  Engineers,  and  the  men  they  have 
trained  at  Panama,  we  have  a  force  im- 
mediately available,  and  there  is  no  rea- 
son for  them  to  stay  at  home  in  idleness 
waiting  for  us  to  develop  an  Army. 
There  is  not  a  General  in  the  Entente 
forces  who  would  not  welcome  an  in- 
crease to  his  staff  of  engineers.  On  every 
front  the  "  sappers "  are  overworked. 
Whether  it  is  digging  new  trenches  or 
draining  water  out  of  old  ones,  building 
roads  or  driving  mines  or  laying  con- 
crete gun  emplacements,  there  is  endless 


MEN  103 

work  for  the  engineers.  Operations  at 
Saloniki  and  Avlona  would  be  immensely 
facilitated  by  harbor  work.  And  every 
General  Staff  needs  more  railroads. 

The  need  is  greatest  in  Russia.  Her 
entire  transportation  system  is  disorgan- 
ised. She  has  the  men  for  her  Army, 
but  lacks  equipment.  And  she  can  only 
get  the  munitions  over  long,  congested 
railroads.  Stores  are  piled  high  at  Arch- 
angel and  Vladivostok.  It  is  not  a  ques- 
tion of  how  much  ammunition  her  allies 
can  furnish  her,  but  how  much  her  rail- 
roads will  carry  from  the  ports  to  the  fir- 
ing line. 

If  our  Engineers  could  put  the  Trans- 
Siberian  Railroad  on  a  basis  of  American 
efficiency  it  would  be  a  greater  blow  to 
Germany's  military  dreams  than  any  one 
other  thing  we  might  do. 

This  transportation  tangle  has  been 
discussed  in  Russia  since  the  outbreak  of 
the  war,  but  they  were  short  of  Engineers 
and  needed  those  they  had  elsewhere  — 
and  they  did  not  believe  the  War  would 


1045  MOBILISING 

last  ver}^  long.  So  the  loan  of  a  large 
force  of  expert  American  railroad  men  to 
Russia  would  be  real  efficiency,  giving 
help  where  it  was  most  needed.  It  might 
go  a  long  way  towards  ending  the  war. 


In  the  development  of  land  forces  the 
first  need  is  proper  facilities  for  speedy 
technical  education.  There  is  a  wide  dif- 
ference of  opinion  on  how  many  months 
of  instruction  it  takes  to  prepare  a  pri- 
vate soldier,  how  many  to  fit  a  man  for  a 
commission.  But  of  the  two,  the  school- 
ing of  enlisted  men  takes  less  time. 
Therefore  the  creation  of  a  corps  of  offi- 
cers is  the  first  step  in  raising  an  arm3^ 
There  is  no  gain  in  calling  men  away 
from  industry  and  then  holding  them  in 
camps  through  months  of  idleness  be- 
cause there  is  no  one  to  train  them.  The 
importance  of  this  point,  while  recog- 
nised by  military  men  who  have  had 
•actual  experience  with  volunteer  forces, 


MEN  105 

is  perhaps  not  understood  by  the  general 
public. 

There  is  a  ratio  in  any  army  between 
mouths  and  muskets.  Take  the  British 
Army  as  an  example,  for  it  will  be  the 
same  with  ours.  Its  size  can  be  stated 
as  the  number  of  men  in  uniform  —  the 
number  of  rations.  But  its  strength  de- 
pends on  the  number  of  men  actually 
engaging  the  enemy  —  the  number  of  ri- 
fles. Now,  you  can  put  as  many  men  as 
you  care  to  feed  into  uniform,  but  you 
can  not  send  them  into  active  service 
until  they  have  proper  leadership. 

A  lack  of  clear  understanding  of  this 
point  —  or  perhaps  it  was  an  effort  to 
frighten  the  Germans  with  resounding 
numbers  —  has  handicapped  the  British 
Army  from  the  start.  The  first  wave  of 
volunteers  utterly  overwhelmed  the  small 
number  of  available  officers.  White- 
haired  old  gentlemen  from  the  Reserve 
were  set  to  work  giving  the  recruits  an- 
tiquated,  pre-Boer    War    drill,    and    so 


106  MOBILISING 

wasted  months  teaching  them  things  they 
later  had  to  unlearn.  The  training  of 
officers  on  a  large  scale  was  not  begun 
promptl3\  Always  there  were  too  many 
men.  The  Universal  Conscription  Bill 
was  passed  before  the  volunteer  army  was 
properly  commanded.  And  it  is  doubt- 
ful if  to-day  the  British  have  anything 
like  enough  officers  for  the  vast  number 
of  men  at  their  disposal. 

If  we  decide  to  raise  an  Expeditionary 
Force  of  Half  a  ^lillion  —  and  we  must 
do  so  unless  we  are  willing  to  bet  that 
German}^  will  be  defeated  this  tiummer 
—  the  first  thing  is  to  begin  intensive 
methods  of  teaching  men  how  to  lead 
them.  And  we  will  need  at  least  ^0,000 
officers  for  our  first  contingent. 

We  have  one  great  advantage  over  the 
British,  our  best  men  will  not  be  sac- 
rificed in  the  first  month  of  vrar.  Every 
British  soldier  who  fell  in  the  Retreat 
from  Mons  was  sorely  missed  when  it 
came  to  drilling  "  Kitchener's  Mob," 


MEN  107 

Beside  our  Regular  Army,  we  have 
an  appreciable  number  of  reserve  and 
militia  officers  and  many  others  who  have 
had  some  preparation  for  command. 
Most  of  our  State  Universities  have 
rudimentary  military  training  and  among 
those  of  their  alumni  who  have  been  cadet 
officers  some  good  material  can  be  found. 
The  State  Governors  should  also  be 
called  on  to  put  in  motion  the  machinery 
they  use  for  selecting  candidates  for 
West  Point,  and  to  send  in  nominations 
for  the  emergency.  An  executive  order 
has  already  directed  the  selection  of 
promising  "  non-coms  "  from  the  Regu- 
lar Army  —  corporals  and  sergeants  — 
for  special  Avork  to  fit  them  for  commis- 
sions. Moreover  since  modern  warfare 
tends  like  modern  industry  to  specialisa- 
tion and  requires  a  large  number  of  ex- 
perts, it  would  be  possible  to  take  direct 
from  our  industrial  life  men  who  are  tech- 
nicians rather  than  soldiers,  for  command 
in  special  service  corps.     A  captain  in 


108  MOBILISING 

an  Aviation  unit,  for  instance,  has  little 
need  of  knowing  infantry  drill  regula- 
tions. 

All  these  possible  sources  should  be 
used  intensively  and  intelligently. 
Within  a  couple  of  months  we  should 
have  at  least  30,000  men  in  the  Officers' 
Training  Corps. 

One  very  obvious  thing  to  do  is  to  get 
expert  advice  from  our  friends.  The  Ca- 
nadians have  had  actual  experience  in 
training  volunteers.  A  large  part  in  our 
drill  courses  should  be  directed  by  men 
who  have  been  through  the  mill.  None 
of  our  officers  have  more  than  a  theoretic 
knowledge  of  "  bombing,"  but  the  Cana- 
dians could  lend  us  plenty  of  wounded 
men  to  teach  us  the  tricks  of  that  trade. 
The  French  are  the  best  artillerists  in  the 
world  and  our  service  would  profit  greatly 
from  French  instruction. 

And  some  of  our  own  men,  already 
schooled  in  theory,  could  at  once  be  sent 
abroad  for  practice.  A  unit  might  be 
organised  from  the  two  upjier  classes  at 


MEN  109 

West  Point.  They  could  rejoin  our 
Army  when  it  was  ready  to  take  the  field, 
and  their  actual  experience  of  warfare 
would  be  of  immense  value  to  our  green 
troops. 

But  every  effort  to  raise  men  should 
be  postponed  until  the  shortage  in  officers 
is  overcome.  If,  for  instance,  it  is  esti- 
mated that  it  takes  six  months  to  break 
in  enlisted  men  and  nine  months  to  qual- 
ify for  a  commission,  the  men  should  not 
be  taken  from  industry  till  the  Officers' 
Training  Corps  have  had  three  months 
start.  Our  General  Staff  knows  how 
many  Lieutenants  and  Captains  and  Ma- 
jors we  wdll  need  and  how  long  it  will 
take  to  produce  them,  and  it  is  on  that 
basis  that  a  date  should  be  set  for  calling 
the  men  to  the  colors. 


These  more  immediate  things  attended 
to,  we  must  take  up  the  question  of  how 
to  raise  men  for  the  new  Army.     Here  we 


no  MOBILISING 

are  at  once  in  for  a  bitter  discussion  be- 
tween the  Conscriptionists  and  the  parti- 
sans of  Volunteer  Service.  Either  sys- 
tem would  give  us  more  men  than  we 
could  at  present  officer.  But  the  prob- 
lem we  now  have  to  face  is  an  emergency 
problem.  Actually  at  war,  we  have  no 
time  to  argue  the  matter  out.  It  is  not 
a  solution  for  all  time  which  we  are  now 
seeking  —  but  an  immediate  programme 
to  meet  an  immediate  need. 

Extreme  militarists  and  extreme  demo- 
crats, Von  Bernhardi  and  Jaures,  were 
agreed  in  favoring  universal  service. 
And  if  it  is  admitted  that  a  large  military 
establishment  is  necessary,  Liberals,  So- 
cialists, Labor  organisations  the  world 
over  prefer  a  Citizens'  Army.  Opposi- 
tion to  Universal  Military  Service  in  the 
United  States  has  been  based  on  the  belief 
that  we  did  not  need  a  large  army.  But 
our  fundamental  laws  have  always  rec- 
ognised the  obligation  of  all  citizens  to 
rally  for  national  defence.  The  Presi- 
dent already  has  the  right  to  "  draft " 


MEN  111 

us  in  a  crisis.  So  the  Conscription  laws 
now  under  consideration  deal  only  with 
the  detailed  application  of  a  long  ac- 
cepted principle. 

But  a  system  of  Universal  Military 
Service  takes  time  to  mature.  We  would 
not  derive  full  benefit  from  it  for  a  decade 
at  least.  And  now  we  are  not  so  much 
interested  in  a  permament  policy  of  Na- 
tional Defence,  as  concerned  with  the 
speedy  development  of  a  strong  offence. 
The  question  before  us  is,  how  to  bring 
the  greatest  pressure  to  bear  on  Germany 
immediately.  And  even  our  military  men 
will  admit  that  Conscription  has  its  draw- 
backs as  an  emergency  measure.  Volun- 
teering brings  quicker  results  and,  for  a 
relatively  small  Army,  has  the  advantage 
of  taking  first  those  who  are  most  ready 
and  free  to  go.  To  call  out  the  ''  class," 
who  have  just  reached  military  age, 
would  be  to  neglect  all  the  older  trained, 
and  half  trained  men,  of  the  militia.  Ob- 
viously that  is  unwise  when  we  want  an 
Army  quickly. 


112  MOBILISING 

Lack  of  officers  will  make  it  imjiossiblc 
for  us  to  put  more  than  half  a  million 
men  in  the  field  by  1918.  We  can  raise 
that  force  by  voluntary  enlistment  with 
little  disturbance  to  our  industrial  life 
and  no  permanent  change  in  national 
policy. 

If  a  large  Army  Is  proved  to  be  nec- 
essary b}^  events,  there  is  little  dispute 
that  Universal  Service  is  the  only  demo- 
cratic way  to  recruit  it.  But  there  is 
grave  and  sincere  difference  of  opinion  as 
to  whether  we  Avill  need  a  large  and  per- 
manent Military  force.  If  this  War  — 
as  so  many  of  us  hope  —  is  to  result  in  a 
Peace  League  of  the  Nations,  if  the  ideal 
which  Mr.  Wilson  has  set  before  us  is 
even  approximated,  we  will  have  no  need 
of  the  largest  Army  in  the  world.  And 
that  is  what  the  Swiss  system  of  Military 
Service  means  for  us  —  Ten  Million 
trained  soldiers. 

Many  of  us  who  are  passionately  per- 
suaded that  we  must  now  throw  all  our 
energy  into  the  struggle  to  free  Europe 


MEN  113 

from  the  Menace  of  Militarism  feel  that 
this  moment  is  peculiarly  ill  chosen  to 
begin  to  arm  ourselves  beyond  the  imme- 
diate need. 

Never  in  the  history  of  the  world  has 
there  been  better  hope  for  some  form  of 
International  Federation  which  will  re- 
duce Military  establishments  to  police 
needs.  It  is  not  only  the  sentimental  re- 
action from  the  horrors  of  this  war,  but 
the  appalling  financial  burdens  already 
fastened  on  Europe.  There  is  a  great 
element  of  our  people,  intensely  patriotic 
in  this  crisis,  fired  by  a  willingness  to 
meet  any  sacrifice  in  this  war,  who  yet 
believe  in  a  peace  to  come. 

We  ma}^  be  forced  to  continue  and 
intensify  our  armament,  but  as  yet  the 
hope  for  a  better  future  is  strong,  the 
need  is  not  yet  obvious.  Let  us  therefore 
avoid  dissension  by  leaving  this  debate 
to  the  events.  Let  us  not  use  the  tem- 
porary crisis  of  this  war  as  a  pretext 
for  deciding  on  policies  for  a  dim  and 
uncertain  future. 


114.  MOBILISING 

Now  we  face  an  emergency.  And  in 
the  immediate  crisis  volunteering  would 
probably  do  as  well  as  conscription,  for 
if  the  men  did  not  come  forward  quickly 
we  would  have  to  resort  to  "  drafts." 
But  the  organisation  of  Universal  Serv- 
ice takes  time  —  and  we  want  the  Half 
Million  men  as  quickly  as  possible. 

And  while  it  is  quite  probable  that  we 
may  not  need  more  than  a  Half  Million 
—  and  even  possible  that  we  may  not  use 
them  —  there  is  always  the  chance  that 
we  may  need  very  many  more. 

It  is  a  chance  which  —  even  if  it  is  only 
an  off  chance  —  we  must  at  once  prepare 
to  meet.  And  we  will  have  to  resort  to 
Universal  Service  if  it  proves  neces- 
sary to  raise  more  than  a  First  Contin- 
gent. The  preliminary  plans  for  this 
larger  structure  should  be  begun  at  once. 

The  first  step  is  a  military  and  in- 
dustrial census.  One  or  two  of  the 
States  have  already  undertaken  such 
work,  but  it  would  be  very  much  better 


MEN  115 

to  centralise  it  under  the  already  trained 
Census  Bureau  at  Washington.  Every 
resident  of  the  United  States  over  16 
should  be  required  to  register  and  should 
be  given  an  Identity  Book.  There 
should  be  recorded:  date  and  place  of 
birth,  nationality,  date  of  naturalisa- 
tion, mail  address,  trade,  present  occupa- 
tion and  previous  military  service.  The 
material  so  collected  would  be  digested 
by  the  Census  Bureau.  We  would  know 
how  many  m_en  are  19  this  year,  how 
many  reached  military  age  in  1891,  and 
so  forth;  how  many  are  unemployed; 
how  m.any  men  are  doing  work  where 
women  could  be  substituted;  how  many 
women  are  available  for  munition  work ; 
how  many  are  engaged  in  vital  indus- 
tries, which  must  not  be  weakened ;  how 
many  skilled  mechanics,  who  are  now  at 
work  on  sewing  machines,  could  be  trans- 
ferred to  arsenals. 

Such  Census  work,  if  it  had  been  un- 
dertaken in  England  in  the  first  months 
of  the  war  would  have  been  of  immense 


116  MOBILISING 

value.  They  did  not  think  the  war 
would  last  so  long.  And  when  at  length 
they  undertook  this  work,  it  was  done 
by  unskilled,  volunteer  census-takers, 
hurriedly  and  ineffectually. 

So  without  interfering  with  the  work 
of  intensifying  our  munition  output 
or  our  ship-building  programme,  without 
interfering  with  the  organisation  of 
the  Volunteer  Expeditionary  Force,  this 
work  of  taking  a  census  of  man-power 
should  be  begun  at  once.  It  is  not  safe 
to  bet  that  the  War  will  be  over  this 
su'mmer  and  such  knowledge  as  this  cen- 
sus would  give  us  must  be  the  foundation 
for  any  further  degree  of  mobilisation  we 
may  have  forced  upon  us. 


In  France  there  was  some  excuse  for 
rushing  the  wrong  men  to  the  front. 
They  thought  they  needed  all  the  soldiers 
they  could  get.  But  this  precipitation 
soon  proved  to  have  been  a  costly  mis- 
take. 


MEN  117 

Here  is  a  case  in  point.  Some  re- 
search surgeons  sent  to  France  by  the 
Rockefeller  Institute  wanted  to  experi- 
ment on  a  new  disinfectant  for  wounds 
and  the  French  Government  gave  them  a 
hotel  in  Compiegne  for  their  hospital. 
Now  these  scientists  were  very  expert  in 
laborator}^  methods  but  they  had  no  ex- 
perience in  the  housekeeping  side  of  hos- 
pital management.  They  did  not  know 
how  to  run  a  laundry,  they  were  not 
cooks  and  had  no  large  experience  in 
marketing.  And  their  work  at  first  was 
very  seriously  handicapped  by  difficulty 
over  such  details.  But  at  last  it  occurred 
to  one  of  them  that  this  hotel,  before  it 
was  requisitioned  by  the  Government, 
must  have  had  a  manager.  After  some 
inquiries  they  discovered  that  the  man 
vvas  a  common  soldier  in  a  regiment  in 
the  Argonne.  With  considerable  trou- 
ble, and  after  tearing  up  much  red 
tape,  they  had  him  sent  back  to  Com- 
piegne. And  their  worries  were  over. 
He  brought   order   out   of   confusion   in 


118  MOBILISING 

twenty-four  hours,  and  the  wounded 
soldiers  who  only  the  day  before  had 
suffered  much  needless  misery  w^ere  now 
vastly  more  comfortable. 

The  same  situation  existed  in  almost 
every  hospital  in  France.  Hotels  had 
been  requisitioned,  but  the  men  who  knew 
how  to  run  them  efficiently  were  — 
if  they  had  not  already  fallen  —  "  some- 
where "  at  the  front.  But  if  the  French 
once  see  a  mistake  they  are  quick  to 
remedy  it.  And  the  improvement  in 
the  hospital  at  Compiegne  was  so 
marked  that  a  general  order  w^as  sent 
out  calling  home  men  who  knew  how  to 
manage  the  domestic  economy  of  hos- 
pitals. 

And  in  these  two  and  a  half  years  of 
war  the  same  thing  has  been  repeated 
over  and  over  again.  !Men  with  special 
capacity  for  some  vitally  important  job 
at  home  have  been  wasted  in  the  training 
camps  and  in  the  trenches.  The  British 
now  are  sorting  out  their  coal  miners 
and  sending  them  home.     One  group  of 


MEN  119 

French  specialists  after  another  has  been 
demobilised.  And  all  this  means  need- 
less dislocation  —  sheer  waste. 

Let  us  profit  by  this  experience.  We 
can  trust  to  luck  and  individual  patriot- 
ism for  the  first  Half  Million.  But  if 
we  need  more  than  that  we  will  have  to 
choose  them  with  care. 


CHAPTER  VI 

A    PROGRAMME 

OUR  Government  has  had  more  than 
two  years  to  watch  the  great  de- 
mocracies of  Europe  struggling  with  the 
problems  of  mobilisation.  And  bearing 
these  lessons  in  raind  we  have  a  right  to 
demand  two  things : 

A  CLEAR  CALL  TO  ARMS.  There 
must  be  a  comprehensible,  sincere  and  in- 
spiring statement  of  why  we  are  asked  to 
light.  The  issue  must  be  put  simply  and 
concisel}^,  in  terms  which  will  reach  all 
our  people.  The  issue  must  be  put  hon- 
estly. If  there  are  good  reasons  for  us 
to  fight,  the  more  completely  the  Admin- 
istration takee  us  into  its  confidence  the 
better.  And  to  be  inspiring,  the  Call  to 
120 


A  PROGRAMME  121 

Arms  must  be  infused  with  the  passion- 
ate idealism  of  Democracy. 

It  must  be  made  clear  that  we  are  fight- 
ing neither  for  our  own  aggrandisement 
nor  to  further  the  ambitions  of  any  na- 
tion against  another.  There  must  be 
guarantees  that  our  war  is  being  waged 
neither  for  the  greater  profit  of  the  mu- 
nition makers,  nor  to  fasten  a  permanent 
militarism  upon  us.  Only  on  a  platform 
of  broad  human  rights,  only  with  Just 
Peace  for  the  World  set  as  a  goal,  can 
the  whole  nation  be  rallied. 

Unless  the  spirit  of  our  people  can  be 
thoroughly  mobilised  our  warfare  will  be 
petty  and  degrading. 

A  COMPREHENSIVE  PLAN  OF 
ACTION.  The  Will  to  Win  will  weaben 
in  idleness.  Mobilisation  is  activity  — 
tense,  determined,  sustained  activity. 
There  should  therefore  be  published  at 
once  —  and  some  one  has  been  remiss  if 
it  is  not  ready  —  a  detailed  plan  of  mo- 
bilisation. 


122  MOBILISING 

First  of  all  this  plan  should  answer  for 
every  man  and  woman  in  our  land  the 
question :  "  What  can  I  do  ?  "  Every 
one  of  us,  in  one  way  or  another,  should 
contribute  something  to  the  national  ef- 
fort. And  we  have  a  right  to  expect 
that  the  Government  shall  direct  our 
willingness  to  serve  into  fruitful  chan- 
nels. Those  of  us  who  are  not  shown 
something  to  do  will  be  getting  in  the 
way. 

And  secondly  the  Programme  of  Mo- 
bilisation should  be  so  framed  that  we 
can  check  up  its  progress.  For  only 
under  the  constant  pressure  of  Public 
Opinion  will  it  be  possible  to  keep  the 
work  from  flagging.  The  most  rapid 
progress  will  be  made  in  those  depart- 
ments in  which  we  are  most  keenly  inter- 
ested. Graft  and  laziness  and  red-tape 
obstructionism  —  all  the  ills  of  bu- 
reaucracy —  flourish  on  public  indiffer- 
ence. We  want  our  experts  to  tell  us 
what  is  needed  and  what  to  look  for  in 
the  way  of  fulfilment.     And  if  our  hopes 


A  PROGRAMME  123 

are  deceived,  we  want  to  know  the  reason 
whj.     We  have  a  right  to  expect: 


Within  One  Week  after  the  outbreak 
of  hostilities: 

1.  That  the  Navy  is  at  work. 

2.  That  our  ship-yards  are  busy  on  a 

coherent,  co-ordinated  programme 
of  construction.  Battleships,  sub- 
marines, sub-chasers,  freight-ships 
and  transports, 

S.  That  our  financial  resources  are  mo- 
bilised, that  the  credit  of  the  na- 
tions fighting  with  us  against  Ger- 
many is  re-established  on  the  par 
exchange,  and  that  we,  as  a  nation, 
have  ceased  to  make  profit  out  of 
the  needs  of  our  Comrades  already 
in  arms. 

4.  That  plans  have  been  matured  for 
the  mobilisation  of  Capitalists, 
Technicians  and  Wage  Workers 
for  increased  production  in  all  war 
industries,  and  that  the  whole  en- 


19A  MOBILISING 

terprisG  of  munition  making  has 
been  put  on  a  basis  of  fair  wages 
and  fair  profits. 

Within  Three  Months: 

1.  That  an  Emergency  War  Cabinet  has 
been  created,  which  will  inspire 
national  confidence  by  the  re- 
nowned honesty  and  efficiency  of  its 
members,  and  that  majorities  have 
been  organised  in  both  Houses  of 
Congress,  representing  the  National 
Unity  in  the  face  of  this  emer- 
gency —  not  a  coalition  of  the  two 
old  parties,  but  the  coalescence  of 
all  patriots,  a  crystallisation  of  the 
National  WiU  to  Win. 

S.  That  our  munition  output  has  doubled 
and  is  steadily  increasing,  and  that 
the  problems  of  distribution  and 
transportation  of  supplies  has  been 
worked  out. 

S.  That  our  Army  Engineers  and  the 
civilian  staff  they  trained  at  Pan- 


A  PROGRAMME  125 

ama  are  at  work  on  the  Trans-Si- 
berian Railroad  or  on  similar  un- 
dertakings abroad. 

4.  That  our  school  camps  for  the  inten- 

sive training  of  officers  are  in  full 
swing,  that  a  course  of  instruction 
based  on  the  experience  of  this 
war  has  been  worked  out,  and  that 
peace  time  red  tape  and  seniority 
rules  in  the  high  command  have 
been  replaced  by  promotion  regu- 
lations based  on  ability,  so  that 
every  private  soldier  carries  a 
general's  epaulettes  in  his  knap- 
sack. 

5.  That  quarters  and  training  facilities 

have  been  arrang-ed  for  the  first 
Half  Million  volunteers,  the  re- 
cruiting started  and  the  date  when 
the  men  will  be  called  to  the  colors 
announced. 
^.  That  the  census  work,  which  must  be 
the  basis  of  any  future  conscrip- 
tion, is  under  way. 


126  MOBILISING 

Within  One  Year  : 

1.  That     500,000     men     are     trained, 

equipped  and  officered  and  that 
transports  are  ready  for  them, 

2.  That    plans    are    perfected    for    the 

training  of  ofScers  and  the  recruit- 
ment  of  our  Army  by  the  just  and 
democratic  method  of  conscription, 
up  to  whatever  degree  of  mobilisa- 
tion shall  prove  necessary. 


At  the  end  of  the  first  year  of  war  wc 
will  have  a  right  to  expect  that  a  good 
beginning  has  been  made,  that  the  enemy 
has  begun  to  feel  the  pressure  of  our  in- 
tervention and  that  all  the  preliminary 
plans  are  laid  to  go  as  far  in  arming  as 
any  one  cares  to  force  us. 

And  we  have  a  right  to  demand  that 
the  Government's  programme  shall  show 
that  the  lessons  of  the  European  War 
have  been  studied,  and  that  the  now  ob- 
vious blunders,  which  retarded  mobilisa- 
tion  in   France  and  Britain,  are  to  be 


A  PROGRAMME  127 

avoided.  We  do  not  want  our  thinking 
befogged  by  unnecessary  limitation  of 
free  discussion  by  an  arbitrary  censor. 
We  ought  not  to  stumble  into  the 
Short  War  Fallacy.  We  should  avoid 
all  friction  with  our  Comrades  in  Arms 
due  to  ambiguity  in  the  definition  of  our 
war  aims.  Our  warfare  must  not  be 
interrupted  by  justified  strikes  in  the 
munition  industries.  And  we  do  not 
want  to  have  our  enthusiasm  for  a  War 
of  Liberation  dampened  by  an  even  ap- 
parent triumph  of  the  anti-democratic 
forces  at  home. 

Above  all  we  have  a  right  and  duty 
to  demand  that  the  Government's  pro- 
gramme of  mobilisation  shall  be  free 
from  bluff. 

"  Bluff  "  is  an  American  word.  The 
Germans,  while  themselves  given  to  bluff- 
ing, are  disposed  to  call.  They  called 
the  bluff  at  Gallipoli.  They  called  the 
bluff  at  Saloniki.  They  called  the  Rou- 
manian bluff.  And  now  they  will  not  be 
the  least  bit  frightened  by  Mr.  Bryan's 


128  MOBILISING 

idea  of  a  million  patriots  springing  to 
arms  over  night.  They  are  afraid  neither 
of  pitch-forks  nor  bare  fists.  WTiat- 
ever  we  may  announce,  they  will  force  a 
show-down. 

Aiid  it  is  equallj^  important  not  to 
bluff  on  account  of  our  Comrades  in 
Arms.  This  War  is  —  whether  we  like 
it  or  not  —  making  us  a  member  of  the 
World  Council.  We  have  a  reputation 
of  Spread  Eagle  bombast  to  live  down. 
And  it  will  be  very  much  better  for  us  to 
perform  more  than  we  promise  than  to 
fall  below  the  expectations  w^e  raise. 

Let  us  harness  the  cart  of  our  aspira- 
tions to  the  stars,  but  keep  our  promises 
down  to  earth.  The  Government's  pro- 
gramme should  be  modest,  realisable  — 
sober. 

That  many  details  of  this  programme 
may  be  unwise,  I  would  be  the  first  to  ad- 
mit. But  that  some  such  programme 
of  energy,  of  action,  is  necessary,  can- 
not be  disputed  by  any  one  who  is  not 


A  PROGRAMME  1^9 

•willing  to  bet  everything  on  the  chance 
that  the  war  will  be  over  this  summer. 

Roumania  ob\aously  thought  the  war 
was   almost   over  —  bet   and  lost. 

Why  should  we  fall  prey  to  this  Short- 
War  Fallacy? 

If  —  happily  —  the  war  ends  quickly, 
it  will  not  be  hard  for  us  to  de-mobilise 
and  go  back  to  our  jobs.  But  if  the 
war  lasts  it  will  be  utterly  impossible  for 
us  to  make  up  for  lost  time. 


THE  END 


DUE  DATE 


^  A?  U 

m 

■^ 

fth  1 8 

^Bt 

A 

JG19 

m 

201-6503 

Printed 
In  USA 

B8722 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 


0* 


o 


.111    or?  1Q70 


